‘I’ve never felt this depth of love’: Emeli Sandé on coming out, race and making music again

Emeli Sandé … ‘It’s one thing to think: ‘I’m gonna go back and finally realise who I am’. Then you realise: OK, I’ve grown up in the UK. I’m culturally British’ Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

I remember, as everyone does, Emeli Sandé performing at the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. She sang Abide With Me so seriously, and yet so joyfully, she looked as though there were some kind of elemental life force trying to burst out of her. At the closing ceremony, she was back, with Read All About It, one of her many hit singles.

“All of that was a dream,” she says, looking back. We’re in her house, which is in the heart of east London, yet somehow feels calm and almost cottagey, as though she has brought the spirit of rural Scotland, where she grew up, with her. “I don’t think it was even planned that I was in the opening and the closing ceremonies, it was just two different teams that asked me.”