Hang On to Your Love

Hang On to Your Love

Sade

“Hang On to Your Love” is a funk-meets-groove track with gorgeous scat moments that allowed this track to cement Sade among American audiences. The song performed well on the American charts, peaking at #5 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Music\Club Play chart and #14 on Billboard’s R&B chart. All in all, “Hang On to Your Love” stayed on the chart for 19 weeks in 1984, becoming Sade’s first appearance on the U.S. R&B chart at the time.

In a 2014 interview with Red Bull Music Academy, producer Robin Millar who worked on Diamond Life shared this about the import of “Hang On to Your Love” in allowing Sade to crossover to American audiences:

After they were released in Europe, we went to the States and met with Cliff Crist, I think he was the only black A&R working out of CBS Records in New York, so we all gravitated to him. He said a very sensible thing. He said, “In my opinion, if you don’t get the black audience first in America, you won’t get them. If you get them first, and if you crossover, they’ll stay with you.” That was why they released “Hang On to Your Love” as the first single in the US. It was the most funk orientated groove track and it was released mainly to black radio stations first, and it was released before “Smooth Operator” or any of those other tracks.