Sade Adu

Five of her ten planets sit in earth signs, with two apiece in fire and water and a single one in air, and five of the ten are fixed. Earth builds and fixed holds; the element that would talk a thing over is down to one planet. The record calls Adu a Nigerian British singer whose albums arrive years apart.

The Sun sits at twenty six degrees of Capricorn with Mercury at eight and Saturn on the first degree of the sign, three planets spread across the sign built on competence and on having actually done the thing, with an ambition that does not need announcing. The Moon answers from Aries at twenty one, where feelings arrive at full volume and are gone almost as fast. For a singer whose record is defined by the gaps between records, a Capricorn Sun with Saturn in the same sign is the placement the whole account rests on.

The Moon sits in quiet contact with Mars seven hundredths of a degree from exact, adjacent signs and the mildest link in the table, which matters here because nothing else in this chart comes within a degree of anything: feeling that translates into action cleanly, in a loose birth with no other tight wiring in it. The Sun sits sixty degrees from Jupiter at just over a degree. Saturn sits in hard contact with Uranus at just over one, order against revolt. Uranus and Pluto were the two planets facing the other way. In a singer whose record is the gaps between albums, a loose chart with one clean contact in it is a fair account of the method.

Jupiter came the whole way round to its Scorpio starting point on 23 October 2018, at fifty nine, ten months after Saturn had closed its own second lap, and four circuits precede it. Scorpio puts no weight at all on what was announced, which for a record built on long silences between albums is the measure that recognises it. Five planets in earth with one in air, in a singer who releases work years apart, is the thing to carry out of this chart: the waiting is not reticence, it is how the chart is built.