Emeli Sandé has revealed that she is in love with a woman.
The My Kind Of Love singer, who appeared at this week’s Concert for , and who was previously married to marine biologist Adam Gouraguine, fell for a classical pianist when she was learning about classical music and now feels like ‘she’s the one for life’.
‘We met through music,’ said Emeli, whose new album, Let’s Say For Instance, is out in May. ‘And I definitely feel happier than ever. It feels great.’
‘For me, true love and having love in your life makes everything fit into place,’ said Emeli, whose debut album Our Version of Events was the biggest selling album of 2012, the year she appeared twice at the Olympic ceremonies.
It was also the year that Emeli, now 35, got engaged to longtime partner Adam before tying the knot in September 2012. However, they announced their split in 2014 after two years of marriage.
As a high-achieving former medical student, Emeli said that she was always very goal-driven but that there was always something missing, even when those goals – getting A’s at University, passing exams – were reached.
Such was her talent that Emeli wrote her first song at the age of 11 and had been offered a record deal at 16 but the teacher’s daughter was keen to concentrate on her education.
Her agent waited patiently for her to finish university before pursuing her musical career.
‘If you don’t really have someone to share it with or someone supporting you behind the scenes, it’s very difficult,’ said Emeli on the day a video for her new song There Isn’t Much was released on YouTube. ‘So now I feel very fulfilled: I’ll always love music and I love my career but now it just feels that despite what happens, I can just enjoy life and be really happy.’
And it’s a message echoed in There Isn’t Much, with lyrics like, ‘Look at all my stuff, you would think I had enough, but I swear it isn’t much, without you’, a song Emeli confirms is about ‘everything I thought I wanted being nothing without the right person to share it with’. The video for the song, shot in just one long take, features female dancers recruited from what the video’s director Mareike Macklon describes as ‘the queer community’.
Asked if this meant that she now identified as bisexual, Emeli, who was previously linked with rapper Jonathan Kabamba, replied, ‘I’m not sure what I identify as but I guess so. I just feel like I should fall in love with whoever I fall in love with.’
Emeli already has a huge gay fanbase and has appeared at gay clubs like Heaven on many occasions – often singing her track Heaven – and says she always feel a real connection with the crowd, which usually includes her gay best friend, a doctor from her days studying medicine, who is as big a Mariah Carey fan as she is.
And to prove that this one is a definite keeper, Emeli, whose nationwide tour starts next month, revealed that she has introduced the woman in her life, who she met just after lockdown, to her parents, who live in Aberdeenshire, where Emeli grew up.
The verdict? ‘All good.’
