Emeli Sandé


(Adele Emeli Sandé Gouraguine)

1987 -

Singer-songwriter. Born in Sunderland (NE England) the eldest daughter of a Zambian father and English mother, the family moved to Alford (Aberdeenshire), when she was four. She studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and graduated in 2009 with a degree in neuroscience. By this time she was singing professionally, ane she released her first solo single Heaven two years later. Thereafter came a string of hits and her album Our Version of Events spent ten weeks at Number One and became the best-selling album of 2012 in the UK. This album went on to break a long-standing record held by The Beatles since the 1960s for longest number of weeks in the charts by a debut album. Also in 2012 she performed in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the London Olympics and won the Brit Awards' Critics' Choice Award. Other albums followed; Long Live the Angels (2016) and Real Life (2019).

She won two Ivor Novello Awards in 2013 for songwriting and composing, together with Best British Female Solo Artist and British Album of the Year in the Brit Awards of 2013 and Best British Female Solo Artist once again in 2017. She was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to music.


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