The Sweetest Taboo
1985 single by Sade
"The Sweetest Taboo" is a song by English band Sade from their second studio album, Promise (1985). It was released in October 1985 as the album's lead single. While the song peaked at number 31 on the UK Singles Chart, it fared considerably better in the United States, where it reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1986, remaining in the top 40 for 13 weeks. It also became the band's second consecutive number-one single on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, following "Smooth Operator".
Music video
The music video for the song, directed by Brian Ward, features the band playing in a loft space in New York City while Sade reflects on the man in her life, interspersed with desert scenes showing their time together. The desert scenes were filmed in Andalusia, Spain, as was "Never as Good as the First Time" also from the album Promise. The storyline was continued in the video to follow-up single "Is It a Crime?".
Reception
Tanya Rena Jefferson of AXS stated, "The group allows the song to shine with its mellow and uptempo flavor. Sade sings proudly and boldly about how she is given love which brings out the best in her.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Sweetest Taboo” as 1985 single by Sade. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1985 single by Sade. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4051313. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Sweetest Taboo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.