Emeli Sandé stars in The Independent’s Music Box series

Chart-topping Scottish artist is back with one of her best albums in years, and performed two tracks for our stripped-down series of live sessions

Brit Award-winning artist Emeli Sandé is the latest star ofThe Independent’s Music Box series, performing two songs from her new album, How Were We To Know.

The record is the fifth full-length studio release from the Scottish artist, 36, who shot to fame with early singles such as “Heaven” and “Read All About It”.

Watch her performance of “How Were We To Know” in full here.

Among her many achievements over the years was a rapturously received performance at the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, and another at the White House in front of President Barack Obama in 2013.

That same year, she took home the prizes for Best Female and Best Album at the Brit Awards, the latter for her chart-topping debut, Our Version of Events, which went on to become one of the biggest-selling albums of the 2010s.

On How Were We To Know, Sandé is back in her element with a collection of soaring, romantic ballads, many inspired by her fiancée, the classical pianist Yoana Karemova.

For Music Box, she performed the title track, “How Were We To Know”, as well as a gorgeous stripped-back version of “All This Love”.

”To embrace my natural self on a cultural and racial level has been a journey I’ve been on from the very beginning,” Sandé, whose mother is English and whose father is from Zambia, told The Independent’s Annabel Nugent in a recent interview.

This album, she explained, reveals a woman finally comfortable in her own skin: “Perhaps at the beginning, I thought I needed to transform into another character or become Emeli, whereas now I feel like I can be myself.”

Emeli Sande performs during the Olympic Games closing ceremony in London (Owen Humphreys/PA) (PA Archive)

She acknowledged the clear similarities between How Were We to Know and her debut: “With that first album, you get so much time to let the music breathe, test it over time and see what works and I feel like I’ve had that luxury again with this new record – it just took four or five albums to get there!

“But I feel like finally, musically, I’m coming back to that pace,” she continued. “I’m taking the time to listen to music again, songs I hadn’t listened to since I was a child, and I’m spending more time at the piano. I’m falling back in love with my passion.”

This was inspired, she said, by her attempt to return to the optimistic state of mind she had before venturing into the music industry.

(Supplied by label)

“I think we take that confidence for granted when we’re younger,” she said. “There’s a purity of ambition before it’s muddied by the reality of what it takes. It’s like you have a real sense of who you are and what you want to do and then you realise what it takes to become a singer.

“I went in with stars in my eyes, especially the way that first album took off, and every one of my dreams was suddenly coming true but it’s a surreal experience, a happy one, but it’s different.

“It’s a journey: of going after what you thought you wanted, losing yourself a bit, and then coming back to that childhood confidence and passion again.”

How Were We To Know is out now via Chrysalis Records.