Emeli Sandé

England’s latest soul singer and star released her debut album Our Version of The Events only last february, but she is already an experienced songwriter having written hits with producer Shahid “Naughty Boy” Khan, and alone, for Professor Green, Leona Lewis, Susan Boyle, Alesha Dixon, Cheryl Cole and Tinie Tempah. She actually wrote her first song at eleven.
Emeli Sandé was born in 1988 in Scotland as a daughter of an African father and a British mother and grew up there knowing early on that she wanted to be a musician and a songwriter, like her idols Lauryn Hill, Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell. Still she studied medicine in Glasgow for four years, before her music career sucked her totally in. At the end of the last decade Emeli won BBC’s Urban Music –competition. Record deal with Virgin was signed in 2010. Sandé, who herself makes big and emotional modern pop soul, got right away to number 6 on the British single chart with Diamond Rings, which she wrote, and sang on, for Chipmunk. Likewise her collaboration with grime star Wiley on Never Be My Woman went to number 8. Simon Cowell, the “mean judge” of many a tv singing contest, has named Emeli “his favourite songwriter”.