This is the first Sade song ever featured on this blog. I guess that’s not a major surprise, but between Random Weekends and mining my own collection, I figured I would have settled on one of her tracks by now.
I’m not a big Sade fan, though I do love her voice. Her genre is just one of the few that I have never gotten into. Smooth jazz R&B is great in the background but that’s about it.
I’ve always disliked this song in particular, because of it’s opening line, “There is a woman in Somalia.” It sounds like the beginning of a limerick or a 5th grade history essay.
I think I never made it past those opening lines because this is the first time I’ve heard or read the climactic simile, in which Sade compares this Somalian woman’s difficult life with the pain of wearing brand-new shoes.
Perhaps that is meant ironically but given the earnestness of the rest of the song, I’m not so sure.
I look forward to the sequel, wherein the plight of a slave during the Middle Passage is compared to that moment you realize your smartphone’s battery has run out.
Scraping for pearls on the roadside
There’s a force stronger than nature
Keeps her will alive
This is how she’s dying
She’s dying to survive
Don’t know what she’s made of
I would like to be that brave
She cries to the heaven above
There is a stone in my heart
She lives a life she didn’t choose
And it hurts like brand-new shoes
Hurts like brand-new shoes
There is a woman in Somalia
The sun gives her no mercy
The same sky we lay under
Burns her to the bone
Long as afternoon shadows
It’s gonna take her to get home
Each grain carefully wrapped up
Pearls for her little girl
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
She cries to the heaven above
There is a stone in my heart
She lives in a world she didn’t choose
And it hurts like brand-new shoes
Hurts like brand-new shoes
Meet Me In Montauk 
I share your opinion on Sade. Haven’t really listened to her in years. I don’t recall ever hearing this song, but I have to believe the shoe line is intended to be ironic. Otherwise, Sade better have bought herself a REALLY uncomfortable pair of new shoes!
I,too, haven’t listened to her in years, but I do like her voice and music. Let’s hope the new shoes is irony 🙂