Emeli Sande and her girlfriend Yoana Karemova have been together for more than a year (Picture: Getty Images)
Emeli Sande won’t be walking down the aisle this year as she’s revealed her wedding plans are on hold.
The My Kind Of Love singer came out in April 2022 and revealed exclusively to Metro.co.uk that she was in love with another woman. Her relationship with classical pianist Yoana Karemova has blossomed over the past couple of years and Emeli, 36, announced they were engaged in September last year.
While the couple do plan on getting married it won’t be this side of 2024 as Emeli’s work schedule is set to ramp up around the album release and concert dates.
‘We’ve kind of put them on hold until I get this album out and we do the shows this year but we’ll probably start planning next year or early next year,’ she teased to Metro.co.uk.
It’s a second chance at love for the powerhouse singer, who was previously married to Adam Gouraguine, and it seems she unknowingly manifested the relationship into reality.
Emeli’s new album How Were We To Know features the piano-led ballad Cos Of You, which was written before she met Yoana but sums up their relationship perfectly.
Emeli is back with new album, How Were We To Know, out on Friday
She manifested her relationship through her music before even coming out
Lyrics include: ‘Thank God I found you, I’ll wrap my arms around you, and won’t let go.’
Speaking about the track – coincidentally just as Yoana sent her a text message – Emeli said: ‘I think a lot of that feeling of love now. I tried to sum up that feeling of when you first fall in love and suddenly the sky’s a different colour to you and your perspective on the world completely changes. So I’d say that’s the one song that was inspired the most [by her].
‘Cos Of You was written before we met and I was imagining this feeling and when I finally met Yoana, that was the feeling I got. It’s lovely that it’s kind of predicted the future in a way.
‘She really loves the album and she’s my biggest supporter. When she’s happy I’m happy.’
Emeli added: ‘I’m a very romantic person I think even though things hadn’t worked out in the past, I still hold onto the hope that I was going to find my person, the person who really understood me and sometimes you can through music really manifest things.’
The album talks about the elation of finding love again but also the desperate depths of when relationships don’t work out. She divorced childhood boyfriend Adam in 2014 and sings about the feeling of loss on the title track How Were We To Know, which she says was written ‘around that time.’
The singer explained: ‘That song is around eight years old so it was around that time where I was reevaluating life. This kind of fairytale that I had of I’m gonna meet someone, my first love, I’m gonna marry them, everything’s just going to be happy ever after.
‘I mean, we got married really young so I think it was this big burst of that bubble like, OK, how are we to know that life really isn’t quite like that and now face real life. That was really when I got shaken up and this is real life now and it’s not a fairytale but it’s still beautiful, so that song was around then.’
Emeli’s comeback falls in what has been a remarkable year for women in music with the likes of Beyonce and Taylor Swift single-handedly regenerating economies with their epic world tours.
‘I love it, I love to see women thriving and especially having long careers in the music industry, that can sometimes be the hardest thing to do is to have longevity and I love that they’re writing their music,’ Emeli said.
She shared the stage with Taylor in 2014 when she performed as a guest on the popstar’s Red tour.
Recalling her time at the shows, Emeli revealed: ‘I remember being really taken aback by her leadership, sometimes when you have a big team around you, you can start feeling quite overwhelmed by so many people but she really was captain of her own ship and I think that’s so important to remember, that no matter how big your team is, you’re essentially the leader.
‘So I really enjoyed seeing how she led prayer, how she got everyone hyped for the show, even doing rehearsals with her and her planning out how the show was going to be, I took that onboard as well. She’s very precise about how she wants things to go and I think that’s great.’
Emeli is marching to the beat of her own drum these days after experiencing the dizzying heights of fame with her debut album Our Version of Events in 2012 and then suffering burnout.
That year alone, she performed at both the London Olympics’ opening and closing ceremony, won the Brits critics’ choice award and enjoyed a number one single with monster hit Beneath Your Beautiful alongside Labrinth.
Reflecting on that time, Emeli confessed: ‘I was pretty burnt out by the end. 2012, loved it, 2013, great, but by the time we hit 2014 and also there’s the pressure of writing a second album and trying to match [the first album’s] success, by the time we got to 2014, I could really have used a break to be honest and luckily I did get time to do that.
‘It’s trying to find that balance of wow, this is happening, all of my dreams are coming true, but then taking time out and also having that personal work balance.
‘When I was working with Alicia Keys, she really became a mentor to me at that point. She said, “make sure you make time for your family and friends and your own personal peace. We all want to be career women, we all want to go for it but you just burn out and then you’re no good to anybody”.’
Emeli’s new album How Were We To Know is out on November 17.
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Emeli got engaged to partner Yoana Karemova in September 2022.
