The single edit added a vocal the album left off
Epic released Never as Good as the First Time on 5 March 1986. It was the third single from Promise, after The Sweetest Taboo and Is It a Crime?. Music & Media, in the issue of 10 May 1986, called it the highest new airplay entry in Europe that week and identified it as that third single. Sade Adu wrote the words. She and Stuart Matthewman wrote the music. The production credit is split four ways: Robin Millar, Ben Rogan, Mike Pela and Sade. The album cut runs 5:00. The single runs 3:57, with a vocal introduction that is not on the album and a slightly different vocal mix. The B-side is Keep Hanging On.
The song had been tracked in 1985 during the Promise sessions at the Power Plant in London and at Studio Miraval in Provence. Next to The Sweetest Taboo it is faster. The lyric argues that the second time will not match the first: good times come and go, the rose is what people remember, the thorns are what they forget. Matthewman’s guitar and saxophone sit in the same band pocket as the rest of the record, but the tempo does not wait around.
Brian Ward directed the video in black and white. Adu rides a horse through El Rocío, Almonte and Huelva, in Andalusia, the same region used for the desert scenes in The Sweetest Taboo. The clip runs about 3:55, in line with the single, not the five-minute album track. There is no loft, no rain machine, no glasses on a cafe table. The picture is a rider and open country.
Nearly all Sade songs are about commitment and security, but this, an ode to hooking up and living purely in the present, is the exception. The reckless pace matches the lyrical abandon.
(Frank Guan, Vulture, 26 October 2017)
The UK chart was a one-week visit at number 89, on 3 May 1986. Ireland reached 29. The Dutch Top 40 peaked at 35. In the United States the Hot 100 peak was 20, on 17 May 1986, after 12 weeks. R&B went to 8. Adult Contemporary went to 6. The dance sales chart reached 18. Canada Adult Contemporary also hit 6. The split is the story of the single: a short edit built for American radio, and a home chart that barely noticed.
Promise had already done its work by then. The album was out on 4 November 1985 and The Sweetest Taboo was a US top five. Never as Good as the First Time did not repeat that peak. It did put a quicker Sade record on R&B radio, with a horse, a black and white frame, and an introduction you only hear if you bought the single.
