Social Icons

Social Icons

Pages

Monday, January 18, 2016

The Story of How Adele Became Famous Will Make You Love Her Even More

On June 9, the United Kingdom's Official Charts Company announced a major milestone for their resident soul singer, Adele: Her sophomore album, 21, is the best-selling U.K. record of the decade so far. That the record has earned such a distinct honor is not entirely surprising; after all, 21 spent an astonishing 23 weeks at No. 1 and to date has sold 4,751,000 copies in the U.K. That's especially amazing when you consider that the U.K. only has a population of 64 million — meaning that enough copies were sold that nearly 15% of the entire country could own the album.

In honor of this announcement, we look back at how Adele got her start, as well as the big ups and big downs that we have come to associate with the young musician's already legendary career.


                                                                      
       Source: Mark J. Terrill/AP

Destined from birth: Adele was born Adele Adkins in 1988 in north London to a working-class mother and an estranged father. It was her young mother, who was only 18 when Adele was born, who encouraged the soul singer to test her limits and explore her creative side. From four years old, Adele had been obsessed with emotive voices, especially those of singers like Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill and Alicia Keys. But her real musical "awakening" came when she discovered Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald records at a thrift store.

"There was no musical heritage in our family," Adele told the Telegraph. "Chart music was all I ever knew. So when I listened to the Ettas and the Ellas, it sounds so cheesy, but it was like an awakening. I was like, oh, right, some people have proper longevity and are legends. I was so inspired that as a 15-year-old I was listening to music that had been made in the Forties. The idea that people might look back to my music in 50 years' time was a real spur to doing this."

Adele left public school at 14 to attend the BRIT performing arts school, where musicians like Leona Lewis and Amy Winehouse also honed their crafts. During her time at the BRIT, Adele uploaded three demos to her MySpace page — among them her first song, "Hometown Glory" — that caught the attention of London record label, XL. At 18 years old, and just six months after her graduation, Adele signed to XL and began her career.

Instant fame: In January 2008, Adele released her debut album, 19, and shortly there after, she won the prestigious Brit Critic's Choice Award. 19 saw nearly instant success in the U.K., debuting at No. 1 and helping its single, "Chasing Pavements," reach No. 2. But it wasn't until Adele signed a deal with American label Columbia, in summer 2008, that the album gained real momentum in the states.

"I had no specific plans for my album," the self-deprecating singer told Blues & Soul in 2008. "In fact, I STILL don't know exactly what kind of artist I want to be! You know, for me the album was just about making a record of songs to get a boy off my chest and include all the different kinds of music that I love."

In the fall of 2008, a series of serendipitous events helped Adele secure four Grammy nominations. She played on Saturday Night Live in October alongside host Sarah Palin, an episode that saw the show's highest ratings in 14 years. The Washington Post reported that within 24 hours of the SNL episode's airing, Adele's debut album hit No. 1 on iTunes. Coincidentally, that was also when Grammy voting wrapped up, and by December, Adele had her first Grammy noms. She won two of those come February 2009, among them best new artist. And like that, she was firmly established as a powerful force in the industry.

Career in jeopardy: After the massive success of her debut album, Adele was primed for a sophomore slump. But she was only just getting going. The wild success of the record took her on a victory lap of North America, but Adele's prospects came to a screeching halt during the summer of 2011, when she was forced to cancel the remainder of her tour due to laryngitis. After recovering and returning to the tour, Adele was again forced to cancel performances in the fall, after her vocal cord issues didn't clear up.

"Singing is literally my life," Adele said in a press release at the time, according to Rolling Stone. "It's my hobby, my love, my freedom and now my job. I have absolutely no choice but to recuperate properly and fully or I risk damaging my voice forever ... I will be back and I'm gonna smash the ball out of the park once I'm touring again."

In November 2011, the singer underwent vocal cord surgery, and Vogue wrote, "Has any pop star ever had a bigger year shackled to a bigger letdown?"


                                                 
Source: Chris Pizzello/AP

A return: That sickness precipitated Adele's relative scarceness for years. But it did little to stall the influence of her sophomore effort — in February 2012, Adele won six Grammys for 21, tying with Beyoncé for the most awards won in a single night. Like the cherry on a sundae, Adele was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People of the year. Yet she hasn't released much new music of her own since, singing only the James Bond song, "Skyfall," which would earn her a tenth Grammy. Soon after, Adele gave birth to her first child. She's been on hiatus ever since, and has likely been working on her third album, but neither a name nor release date have been revealed. Rumor has it that it will come this year.

At only 27, Adele has achieved a rare but well-deserved legendary status among young female pop stars. It seems guaranteed that Adele will be, like her idols Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald, one of those musicians who people look back on 50 years from now.

Adele: ‘I can finally reach out a hand to my ex. Let him know I’m over it’

On a sunless and sopping morning in October, Adele arrives at the London offices of XL Recordings carrying a tea in one hand, a phone in the other, and the fortunes of the global music industry in her handbag. “Been sleeping with this chained to my wrist,” says Adele, of a slim silver laptop she removes from the bag. “Naaah. Who do you think I am, a Russian gangster? I just keep it next to my bed.” Inside a soundproofed lounge at XL, a room that’s messy and dorm-like, with old newspaper pull-outs and apple cores left lying about, Adele squats next to an amplifier. She tugs at wires, punches at buttons, trying to hook up her laptop for sound.


The 27-year-old is dressed today in dark jumper and tapered trousers, her red hair pulled back to reveal rows of hooped gold in each ear. Heeled boots, studded with glitter, have begun to moult in the autumn damp; wherever Adele settles around the room she leaves behind traces of sparkle. Jet black fakeys have been glued to her fingernails, but they’re in ruins – bitten away. “I’m 60% excited,” says Adele, directing me to a couch beside a set of speakers, “40% shitting it.” She’s invited me here today to hear her third album, 25.

Adele’s third album! This thing has become almost mythical in our culture, likeSalinger’s unpublished story trove, or the long-lost method of Incan stone-fitting. There were rumours that Adele would release 25 in 2013, the year she actually turned 25. Then the pop star herself hinted that the record would come out in 2014 – as indeed it might have done; a version was more or less ready to go last year, only for Adele to junk half the tracks. “I would have been embarrassed if I’d got away with that record. I was trying to hurry.”

Today, now, it’s ready. At supper time tonight, Adele will submit to her label bosses a final tracklist. First thing tomorrow, liner notes and promotional literature will begin to churn from print presses. Great pillars of CDs will start to cook in factories. Digital editions of 25 will be made iTunes- and Amazon-ready. Ads will be broadcast. And after that – who knows?

The last time Adele put out an album, her second, 2011’s 21, it returned seven Grammys, two Brits, two Ivor Novellos, three AMAs, two Aims, an Ascap, an Impala, a Mobo, two Music Week awards, two Q awards, four MTV awards, two Nickelodeon awards, a Glamour award, two German Echos, two French NRJs, a Polish Fryderyk, a Mexican Premios Oye! and a Canadian Juno. Sales-wise, it wasa generational one-off, a moon landing. As recently as August, 21 was still being bought a couple of thousand times a week. Estimated sales to date: 30m.

“But, no, see, this is the thing,” Adele says. “You can’t make assumptions. This new one could sell 100,000.”

It could. Though you expect some sort of nuke or pandemic would have to wipe out most of the waiting public first.

“Well, I don’t want to get my hopes up,” says Adele.

She waggles a sparkly boot. “I’m not arrogant. I’m not gullible. Some people I’ve spoken to have said, ‘You’re going to sell at least half what you sold before.’ But I don’t think anything’s a given. You don’t know.”

When I first met Adele, five years ago, we didn’t know. It wasFebruary 2011 and the musician, then 22 and very hectic, very gobby, had been flown to New York for a series of gigs and interviews. I followed her around for a weekend, hanging out with her small entourage while they shouted at each other in dressing rooms, gossiped, watched illegal streams of Premier League football matches, and impressed Americans wherever they went with their ability to cram swearwords into unusual crannies of speech. At the time I thought I was writing a story about a promising Londoner (born north London, raised south London, trained at the Brit School, signed to XL in 2006, her debut 19 out in 2008) who was trying to break America with her second album. Pop history suggested the effort would likely fail. But the attitude in Adele’s camp seemed to be: might as bloody well give it a shitting go.

Before flying out to New York, Adele had sung at the 2011 Brit awards in London. Her rendition of Someone Like You, a ballad off the new album, had gone down well. Ovation on the night. Champagne sent to her table… Hungover, Adele climbed on to a plane to JFK and by the time she landed everything had changed. Her live recording of Someone Like You was fast bundling up the UK singles charts. (I remember Adele being put out: Someone Like You wasn’t supposed to be formally released as a single for months, so her diary was all out of whack.) When word came through that the song had gone to No 1, she went off for a pedicure.

Adele remembers it as a time of surprise and satisfaction; also of mounting terror. “I was frightened. I knew something was happening. Not to the level it ended up being. But I could feel this buzz. Suddenly there was the prospect of breaking America and it was, like, ‘Fuck.’” She says she felt oddly dislocated at the time. “Almost like an out-of-body experience. I remember my mum asking, ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’” Adele couldn’t explain. “I could just feel something coming.    

                  

Adele at the Church Studios, London, July 2015. “I don’t want to get my hopes up,” she says about the expectation riding on her third album, 25. Photograph: Alexandra Waespi

Before long, 21 had gone to No 1 in nearly 30 countries. In the UK and the US it bedded in at the top of the charts for a month, for two – for half a year. Soon Amazon confirmed it had never shipped more CDs. Guinness kept preparing new bouquets of world records. Having already celebrated 21 as its album of the year for 2011, the trade magazine Billboard was obliged to make 21 its album of the year again, for 2012. The producers of James Bond invited Adele to sing the theme for a new instalment, Skyfall, and when it was released as a single, that sold millions, too. She won a Golden Globe. An Oscar.

In Britain, she became Miss Adele Adkins MBE, the honour lengthening her name even as Adele became so well known around the world that a first name would always do. When critics at Rolling Stone decided 21 was among the best albums ever made by a woman, Adele was pipped only by Patti, Stevie, Dusty, Joni and Aretha. When the Recording Industry Association of America upgraded 21 from “platinum” to “diamond”, Adele became one of few women to have achieved the loftier sales rank, along with Madonna, Mariah, Alanis, Britney and Whitney.

Her music was the most-requested in karaoke bars, the most played at funerals, “the best for nervous flyers”, “the most popular to fall asleep to”. It was said that, when a song by Adele played on the radio at Leeds General hospital, a girl awoke from a coma.

‘Abit overwhelming,” Adele says, looking back. In the ramshackle lounge at XL, she has started to play me 25. Palms tight around a mug of tea, she cocks her head and mouths along to the first track: “Hello/ It’s me/ I was wondering if after all these years...”

This is Hello, a tremulous ballad about the difficulty of re-establishing closeness after a separation, and the album’s first single. “It seemed the right way to start. After my, uh, sabbatical.” As it plays, she waggles her fingers during some of the song’s warbly bits. That apple core – the one left behind in the lounge by whichever XL employee was using the room last – begins to tremble and fizz whenever her vocal climbs in pitch...

Reports about how much XL Recordings has earned from Adele have not always aligned, except inasmuch as everyone agrees it’s loads. The label still occupies the same tumbledown office it always did, on a mews in west London. Body-rubbed posters of affiliated artists overlap on the walls of the lobby, the one advertising 21 gummed up behind an umbrella stand. A fruit bowl has three shrivelled pears in it. On the reception desk there’s a flimsy boxfile with “Accounts and expenses!!!” felt-tipped on the front. Music Week guessed this company made a profit of £40m within a year of 21’s release.

Adele seems to have followed XL’s lead when it comes to downplaying financials. Though reports put her fortune somewhere north of £50m, she prefers to state the case this way: “I started shopping at Waitrose.”

Other things changed in her life. Definitely there were fewer queues, cruddy tasks, trips by public transport. At the same time she lost her access to some of the easy small talk and anonymity of everyday life. “When I walk into a room full of people that I don’t know, they stop talking. And I understand that. I get it. Because I’ve done it myself in the past. It’s just... If I go up to someone and ask what they do for a living, they’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s not very interesting, compared to what you do.’ But it is interesting. I’m interested. It’s real life, and I want to chat about it. Let’s chat about it today and let’s chat about it again tomorrow.”

It’s generally forgotten about Adele, in these days of her ubiquity, that she used to be cool. Cooler-than-you cool, a fringed teenager who went around behind aviators and Marlboro smoke, whose friends were mostly striving artists, who kept in her bag a copy of Time Out folded to the gigs page. When I first saw Adele perform, at a small London show back in 2007, she came on stage wearing a floral frock and a snarl. She played an acoustic guitar while drinking a pint. By the time I met her in New York, this phase was more or less over, the singer now dressing in black, favouring big lashes and lots of liquid eyeliner. The inner hipster hung around, though; Adele retains the use of a fully-functioning dickhead radar.


Adele: the girl with the mighty mouth

“What have I said no to? Everything you can imagine. Literally every-fucking-thing. Books, clothes, food ranges, drink ranges, fitness ranges... That’s probably the funniest. They wanted me to be the face of a car. Toys. Apps. Candles. It’s, like, I don’t want to endorse a line of nail varnishes, but thanks for asking. A million pounds to sing at your birthday party? I’d rather do it for free if I’m doing it, cheers...” At a certain point, Adele says, “money is all that gets thrown at you”.

Not that she hasn’t had her wobbles – succumbing to perks, lackeys, after-yous. “It’s very easy to give in to being famous. Because it’s charming. It’s powerful. It draws you in. Really, it’s harder work resisting it. But after a while I just refused to accept a life that was not real.”

What seemed unreal about it?

“Like.” She thinks. “Like, becoming OK with having things done for you. Or – no – expecting things to be done for you. I’ve had a few moments like that. And it frightened me. I think it was something simple like running out of clean clothes. And me not having the initiative to wash my own clothes. I was annoyed that my clothes weren’t clean.”

When was this? “Peak-y. Around the time of 21, when I was on top of the mountain.”

So? “So I told myself I’d better abseil down. And go and do my fucking laundry.”

Fame is charming. It’s powerful. It draws you in. But I refused to accept a life that was not real.

Occasionally, on the tracks I hear from her new album, Adele sounds as if she pines for her pre-21 days. “I miss my friends... I miss it when life was a party to be thrown...”

She says this isn’t the case, that she doesn’t feel any regret about the way things have gone. “I think everyone assumes I don’t like where I am, or what I’ve done, or what I’ve become. But actually I love it. Because I’m an artist, I have an ego, and it likes to be fed.” I sense Adele’s wary of being seen as that musician – the one who gets famous by singing about matters human and relatable, then afterwards writes exclusively about how awful it is to hop between five-star hotels on tour. “I was never going to write my record about Being Someone Really Famous. Because who cares?”
Advertisement


Still. One particular lyric, from a song called Million Years Ago, seems to point to an explicit malaise. “Around the streets where I grew up,” Adele sings, “They can’t look me in the eye/ It’s like they’re scared of me/ I try to think of things to say/ Like a joke or a memory/ But they don’t recognise me/ In the light of day...” This sounds like someone, I say, who’s stepped into a lot of rooms that fall silent. What does that feel like?

“It’s lonely. It makes you lonely. I mean, I can usually break the ice. If after 10 minutes people still aren’t saying anything, I’ll crack a joke, and I’ll go in to my scared-nervous-chat mode, like I do on stage, and make everyone laugh. But then I feel as if I’m performing. And I don’t know if that’s… Like… Don’t they ever want to meet just me? But then, at the same time I think, they’re probably not even there to meet me... I can’t explain.”

“Like, maybe me and my friends are going out to celebrate someone’s engagement. Or their birthday. Or we’re there to wet a baby’s head. It’s their event – it’s not about anyone meeting me. But that’s what it becomes. So sometimes it’s easier not to go.”

 

Adele at British Grove Studios, London, July 2015. Photograph: Alexandra Waespi

A contradiction troubles the very famous. Their renown makes them magnetic (“Look! Shh!”) and at the same time it creates real or imagined distance. They might only be exposed to the worst of the rest of us, inquisitiveness through a long-lens, clamminess up close. A personal example. Last spring I happened to bump in to Adele at a gig, the first time I’d seen her since our meeting in New York, and since the tropical storm of 21’s success. Ridiculously, surprisingly, I was starstruck almost to incoherence on meeting Adele – managing only a croaky greeting before scurrying away across the venue. Where, inevitably, I spent most of the gig craning my neck to gawp at her.

When I explain this, Adele smiles. A tell-me-about-it smile.

“In some ways I think it’s everyone else that changes,” she says. “Even more so than the person who becomes famous.”

Afew years ago Adele settled down with a new boyfriend, a charity executive called Simon Konecki. In 2012 they had a son together, Angelo. Gawping from a distance, it appeared as if romance and motherhood provoked a period of hibernation. Reclusiveness, even.

“I’m not a recluse,” she says. “Can we clear that up? I didn’t stop going to shops. To parks. To museums. I just wasn’t photographed while doing it.”

We saw her out at two Brit awards, two Grammys ceremonies, and in early 2013 she flew to Hollywood for the Globes and the Oscars, not so long after giving birth. (“Running to the toilet, between awards, to pump-and-dump. Which loads of people were doing, by the way. All these Hollywood superstars, lined up and breastfeeding in the ladies. No, I can’t say who. Because I saw their tits.”) After that, there wasn’t much to report. Tussauds unveiled a waxwork. When Adele wrote on Twitter, late in 2013, that she’d passed her driving test, it was as much as we’d learned about her in a year.

This isn’t common, a musician going dark at a time of high commercial appeal, and it seemed to baffle and even annoy people in her industry. “She’s a slippery little fish, is Adele,” complained Phil Collins, who’d been trying to get in touch about a possible collaboration. “I got through to someone, not her,” said Bob Geldof, when he was trying to book acts for Band Aid 30. “She’s not doing anything at all at the moment.” Adele: “I know some people thought I was mad for taking a break. Even I can see it was a bit weird. But I’m glad it happened. I think it was the right thing. It slowed everything down.”

What was the motivation to come back?

People found comfort in 21, because everyone can understand being disappointed by love

“Um. My son.” She explains. “I felt so mega having given birth; the confidence from that, I felt unstoppable. I’m sure most women feel that... Towards the end of the 21 stuff, I couldn’t remember why I was doing it any more. I couldn’t answer the question: ‘Why am I halfway around the world? On my own?’ But then, after I had my son, I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s why I did it all.’ I felt proud of what I’d achieved with 21 for the first time. And now everything I do, in every channel of my life, is part of a legacy that I’m making for my child. For my children, if I have more. I’m not motivated by much, certainly not by money – but I’m motivated by that. I want my child to see his mum running a proper business again. Being a boss again. Hopefully smashing it again.”

In the lounge at XL, we start to nod our heads, bounce knees, tap hands on available surfaces. Adele is playing a track called Send My Love (to Your New Lover), all beat and belligerence, the kind of pointy revenge song (think I Will Survive or Beyonce’s Irreplaceable) that makes you want to go out and find an unfaithful bloke, just to be able to toss him out and sing this stuff at him down the driveway.

“Send my love to your new love-HUH-er/ Treat her better.”
Watch Adele’s performance of Someone Like You at the 2011 Brit Awards.

Adele says, “This is my fuck-you song.” It was written in reference to the last guy, that never-named ex who dumped her when she was young, inspiring the best and saddest songs on 21. “It sounds obvious, but I think you only learn to love again when you fall in love again,” she says. “I’m in that place. My love is deep and true with my man, and that puts me in a position where I can finally reach out a hand to the ex. Let him know I’m over it.”

“My man”, by the way, is Adele’s go-to term for Konecki; much as “my son” is the only way she’ll ever refer to Angelo. A policy of namelessness seems to be part of a deal Adele has made with herself, a way of discussing her new album without too badly waiving the privacy of those closest to her. It must have been easier to cluck away about a meanie former boyfriend. He’d scarpered anyway! Adele has to be more cautious now. Her relationship with Konecki was first reported three years ago, when the pair holidayed in the Everglades and were surrounded by crocs, both real and carrying cameras. Every so often, since then, Adele has had to deny drippy tabloid reports that they’ve secretly married, or secretly split.

She sighs. They are still together. “Contrary to reports. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And very happy.”

She plays another track, one called I Miss You, which Adele says she began to write one night while lying in bed, unable to sleep. “I miss you/ I miss you/ I miss you/ I miss you.” I ask her what Konecki makes of the song. “My man is loyal,” says Adele. “My man is strong. So we spoke early on, and he said, ‘Your writing isn’t anything to do with me.’ He’s fine with it. And it takes a strong man, I think, to be like that.”

I'm not a recluse. Can we clear that up? I didn't stop going to shops. To parks. To museums.

She wrote most of 21 during a series of one-on-one sessions with trusted co-writers. Same again with 25 – Adele plonking down near a piano with a super-producer such as Max Martin or Greg Kurstin, or maybe with a relative unknown (she found one collaborator, Tobias Jesso Jr, online), and seeing what emerges after a few days. This process proved fluid on 21. “That record was an anomaly – effortless!” Not so 25. Around the time of the Oscars, and up early that day with her kid, Adele spent a morning in the Hollywood studio of Paul Epworth, with whom she’d collaborated on 21.

“We fucked around for a bit, like an hour. And it became very clear very quickly that I wasn’t in the right headspace.” But she did pull together some songs, here and there, over the following year – eventually throwing away most of them, last autumn, on the advice of the producer Rick Rubin. He’s a friend, and flew to London to offer Adele advice on what she’d recorded. In a playback room much like the one at XL, Rubin was blunt: no good. “Honestly,” says Adele, “I was waiting for someone to say it.” What happened next? “I went back to the drawing board. Worked my arse off.”


Adele performing on Later… With Jools Holland in June 2007. Photograph: Andre Csillag/Rex

She knows that a big part of 21’s appeal was its absolutely-gutted-ness. “People found massive comfort in it, because everyone can understand being disappointed by love.” From what I hear of the new record, today, it’s clear that Adele’s fans will be delighted by how it sounds – elegant, moody, a lot of E minor, with tight arrangements, leave-alone production, tons of pianos and bass, that inimitable cracked-concrete vocal. The lyrics, though, rarely plumb to misery. There’s none of the tight-jawed break-up analysis Adele has become known for. Where 21 sounded as if it was written while cradling an open wound, 25 comes over more like the study of interesting scars.

Adele thinks that part of the reason composition came so much harder this time was that she couldn’t completely lose herself, as she had before, in gutted-ness. “I couldn’t give in to any of that in order to access my creativity. There was no opportunity.”

Why not? “Because now I’m responsible for someone.”

It’s tricky to know how much to press Adele on Angelo. He is constantly, if obliquely, referenced in her chat. She has his name tattooed on the outside edge of her hand. The three-year-old even makes a charming bid for inclusion in our interview, when Adele speaks to him on the phone and has to tell him: “No, you can’t talk to the man. No, I can’t take a picture of the man.”

All the same, there are grimly necessary precautions that famous parents have to take around their kids. Recently, Adele won a legal action against a picture agency, Corbis, that had been involved in papping Angelo’s first trip to playgroup.

As a rule, Adele is inclined to share. At one point in our conversation, dissatisfied with her descriptions of a new tattoo of a dove on her back, she yanks down jumper and bra strap to reveal it. But circumstances have forced her to check what comes naturally, and when she discusses Angelo, today, the expression on her face betrays an obvious battle. Enjoyment of a sweeping and expansive gossip, on the one hand, and legitimate concern for her son’s privacy on the other. It’s a contradiction Adele sums up with perfect Adele-ness, when she shows me her Angelo tattoo and says, “What a cunt, right? I won’t say his name out loud. And then I go get it written on my hand.”


When the playback ends, and when Adele has dashed from the room for an exhausted wee (“Gotta piss!”), I ask her if we can go back and hear one particular track again. It’s a song called When We Were Young – and it’s in me, already, demanding a repeat listen.

“You look like a movie/ You sound like a song/ My god this reminds me/ Of when we were young.”

The song has an irresistible ambiguity to it, mournful as well as hopeful, exactly the combo that made Someone Like You so special. When she played the track the first time, she seemed especially anxious about it, reaching to make minute adjustments to the volume, then planting her fingers in her mouth to massacre the glue-on acrylics. Second time around, she keeps her eyes shut, nodding gently.

This is the one, then – the Hit Expectant. I can’t help thinking Adele has smashed it, as she’d hoped. The song just has that feel – a standard in the making, only waiting to become a part of the fabric of the coming years, chosen again and again on karaoke machines, picked out for people to get married to and buried to, centrepiece of an album that seems sure (however much she flaps her hand and demurs) to rattle the world the way 21 did.

Adele doesn’t know it yet, but when Hello, her first single from 25, goes on sale not long after we meet, it will sell half a million copies over two weeks in the UK, and 1.8m in the US. It will bundle up the charts to No 1 in both those countries, and around the world. Someone will train a speedgun on Twitter, and work out that 25 messages are being generated about Adele every second. Her album will go to No 1 on iTunes on pre-sales alone.

But that’s to come. In the lounge at XL, When We Were Young finishes playing for a second time, and we sit in silence for a moment, giving the song some room. Then Adele opens her eyes and says: “I feel like I’ve just done a school play, and nobody’s clapped yet.”

It’s beautiful, I say.

She beams. Bending at the waist, Adele performs an exaggerated, pantomime bow. She flaps her fingers at her reddening cheeks, blinks rapidly, and says: “Well, fucking phew.”

25 is out on XL Recordings on Friday 20 November.

12 Mind-Boggling Facts About Adele’s Record-Breaking Debut

The buzz has been building that Adele’s new album, 25, would break the record for the greatest one-week sales tally since Nielsen began tracking music sales in 1991. As it turns out, it didn’t just break the record, it blew it to smithereens.

Hits, a music industry trade magazine, reports that 25 sold close to 3.4 million copies in its first week. Billboard is expected to report a very similar figure on Sunday. That’s nearly 1 million more than the previous record-holder, *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached, which sold 2,416,000 copies in its first week in March 2000. (Adele’s eye-popping tally doesn’t count about 114K “equivalent units” representing the album’s digital track sales.)

But there’s a lot more to this story. Here are 12 more facts about Adele’s boffo first week that you may not have realized.


1. 25 sold nearly as many copies in its first week as Taylor Swift’s three most recent albums have in their opening weeks combined. Swift’s albums, each of which made headlines for million-plus debut weeks, sold 3,542,000 in their first weeks combined.

2. 25 sold slightly more copies in the U.S unblocked school. this week than the #1 albums had sold in the previous 22 weeks combined. (That total is 3,348,000.)

3. 25 sold more copies in its first week than any album sold in the entire year in three recent years (2008, 2009, and 2013). The best-selling albums of those years were, respectively, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III(2,874,000), Swift’s Fearless (3,217,000),and Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience (2,427,000).

4. 25 sold nearly 10 times as many copies in its first week as Adele’s previous album, 21, which sold 352K in its first week in February 2011. Also: 25 sold nearly five times as many copies in its first week as 21 sold in its peak week, following the 2012 Grammys, where Adele walked off with six awards. 21 sold 730K that week.

5. 25 sold more copies in its first week than 21 sold in its first 28 weeks of release. Also: 25 sold more copies in its first week than Adele’s debut album, 19, has sold since it was released in 2008. (It has sold just north of 2.7 million.)

6. 25 is already the best-selling album of 2015. In fact, it has sold more copies than the next two best-selling albums of the year combined. They are Swift’s 1989 and Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. Combined 2015 sales of those two albums: 2,885,000.

7. 25 sold more copies in its first week than No Strings Attached sold in its first two weeks combined. Sales of that album after two weeks: 3,227,000.

8. 25 sold more copies in its first week than the next two fastest-breaking albums by female artists combined. Those albums are Britney Spears’sOops! unblocked games online… I Did It Again, which sold 1,319,000 in its first week, and Swift’s1989, which sold1,287,000 in its first week. (The combined total is 2,606,000.)

9. 25 sold nearly as many copies in its first week as the next five fastest-breaking albums by British artists combined. Those albums are the Beatles’ Anthology 1 (855K in its first week), Coldplay’s X&Y (737K in its first week), Coldplay’s Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (721K in its first week), Susan Boyle’s I Dreamed a Dream (701K in its first week), and Mumford & Sons’ Babel (600K in its first week). (The combined total is 3,614,000.)

10. 25 is on track to sell 6 million copies by year’s end. That would be the greatest total in a calendar year since 2004, when Usher’s Confessionssold 7,979,000 copies. (21 didn’t reach 6 million in either of the years it was the year’s best-seller. 21 sold 5,824,000 copies in 2011 and 4,414,000 copies in 2012.)
11. Adele is expected to have a second album in this week’s top 10. 21 is expected to rebound from #25 to right around #8. This will be the album’s 82nd week in the top 10. Adele had two albums (19 and 21) in the top 10 for four weeks in February and March 2012 on the heels of that year’s Grammy Awards.

12. 25 is also setting records around the world. It sold 800K copies in its first week in the U.K. This breaks the old first-week record set by Oasis’sBe Here Now, which sold 696K copies in its first week in August 1997. The numbers-crunchers at the Official Charts Company note that 25 sold more copies in the U.K. this week than the next 86 albums on their chart combined.

Adele Biography

Singer Adele is a Grammy Award-winning artist whose throwback, soulful sound has made her an international success with hits like "Rolling in the Deep" and "Someone Like You."

Image result for about adele

Synopsis
Adele was born in North London, England, on May 5, 1988, eventually attending the performing arts BRIT School. Her first two albums, 19 and 21, earned her critical praise and a level of commercial success unsurpassed among her peers, with the artist selling millions of albums worldwide and winning multiple Grammys. She also received a songwriting Oscar for the James Bond track "Skyfall." After becoming a mom, Adele returned to the charts in autumn 2015 with the ballad "Hello," the lead single for her forthcoming album 25.

Early Years and Influences
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on May 5, 1988, in North London, England. She was the only child of Penny Adkins, an "arty mom" who was just 18 at the time of her birth, and a Welsh father, Mark Evans, who left the family when Adele was only 4 years old.

Evans remained in contact with his daughter up until her teen years, when his problems with alcohol and increasing estrangement from his daughter caused their relationship to deteriorate. By contrast, Adele grew close to her mom, who encouraged her young daughter "to explore, and not to stick with one thing."

Early on, Adele developed a passion for music. She gravitated toward the songs of Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige and Destiny's Child. But her true, eye-opening moment came when she was 15 and she happened upon a collection of Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald records at a local shop. "There was no musical heritage in our family," Adele told The Telegraph in a 2008 interview. "Chart music was all I ever knew. So when I listened to the Ettas and the Ellas, it sounds so cheesy, but it was like an awakening. I was like, oh, right, some people have proper longevity and are legends. I was so inspired that as a 15-year-old I was listening to music that had been made in the '40s."

While clearly bright, Adele wasn't oriented towards traditional classroom settings. Instead, her mother enrolled her in the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology, which counts Amy Winehouse as an alum.

While at school, Adele cut a three-track demo for a class project that was eventually posted on her MySpace page. When executives at XL Recordings heard the tracks, they contacted the singer and, in November 2006, just four months after Adele had graduated school, signed her to a record deal.
Commercial Success
Adele's debut album, 19, which is named for the singer's age when she began recording the project, went on sale in early 2008. Led by two popular lead singles, "Hometown Glory" and "Chasing Pavements," the record rocketed Adele to fame.

Released in the United States through Columbia Records, 19 resonated with American audiences, much as it had with British music listeners. Adele cemented her commercial success with an appearance in October 2008 onSaturday Night Live. At the taping of the show, the album was ranked No. 40 on iTunes. Less than 24 hours later, it was No. 1.

At the 2009 Grammy awards, Adele took home Best New Artist. In addition, the album earned the singer the distinction of being named the "Sound of 2008" by the BBC. That same year, she earned the Critics' Choice prize at the BRIT Awards.

Blockbuster Followup: '21'
Her much anticipated follow-up album, 21, again named for her age at time of recording, did not disappoint upon its release in early 2011. Tapping even deeper into Adele's appreciation for classic American R&B and jazz, the record was a monster hit, selling 352,000 copies within its first week.

Anchored by hits like "Rolling in the Deep" and "Someone Like You," 21placed Adele in rarified air. In February 2011, she found herself with two Top 5 singles and a pair of Top 5 albums in the same week, becoming the only artist besides the Beatles and 50 Cent to achieve that milestone. And with 21staying at No. 1 for 11 weeks, Adele also broke the solo female artist record previously held by Madonna's Immaculate Collection for consecutive weeks atop the album charts. 21 went on to sell more than 30 million copies worldwide.

In 2012, Adele swept the Grammy Awards, taking home six wins, including Album of the Year. "This record is inspired by something that is really normal and everyone's been through it—just a rubbish relationship," she said at the ceremony. In 2013, Adele won her seventh Grammy (Best Pop Solo Performance) for her hit single "Set Fire to the Rain." That same year, the singer won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for "Skyfall," the theme song for the 2013 James Bond film of the same name.

Coupled with her success is Adele's maturity and ability to avoid the fame-induced pitfalls that plagued Winehouse. Adele, whose larger, curvier body bucks the trend of most Top 40 female celebs, is also confident in not just her talent, but in her looks. "I've seen people where it rules their lives, you know, who want to be thinner or have bigger boobs, and how it wears them down," she told Vogue magazine in 2011. "And I just don't want that in my life."

Make-Up Album: '25'
On October 22, 2015, Adele announced that she would release her third album, 25, in November. She posted 25's cover on Instagram, and said of her first full-length studio project in several years: "My last record was a break-up record, and if I had to label this one, I would call it a make-up record. Making up for lost time. Making up for everything I ever did and never did. 25 is about getting to know who I've become without realizing. And I'm sorry it took so long but, you know, life happened."

The following day Adele released the ballad "Hello," an epic track that again showcased her soaring voice over classic pop craft. The accompanying visual clip, featuring actor Tristan Wilds as the romantic interest, was directed by up-and-coming filmmaker Xavier Dolan and is reportedly the first music video to be shot with IMAX cameras.

"Hello" debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's pop charts, thus becoming Adele's fourth chart-topper and making history as the first single to receive more than one million downloads in a week's time. The song has remained at No. 1 for multiple weeks in the U.K. as well.

25, released on Nov. 20, is a collection of emotional, sometimes plaintive songs looking at the ins and outs of relationships, owing much of its sound to traditional pop craft. The album is an international sales juggernaut as well, reaching No. 1 on iTunes in 110 countries. In the U.S., 25 sold 3.38 million copies in seven days, beating the 'N Sync record of 2.42 million album copies sold in a week. Among other feats, 25 is also the fastest album to reach a million copies sold in the U.K., doing so in 10 days.

Personal Life
On June 29, 2012, Adele announced on her website that she was pregnant with her first child. The baby's father is Adele's boyfriend, Simon Konecki. Adele spoke to People magazine about being a mother: "I really want to be a mum. I better start getting on with it!" she said, adding that she wants to have a trio of boys by the time she's 30.

She gave birth to her son Angelo on October 19, 2012.

Adele Reveals Who ''Hello'' Is About and Says Ex-Boyfriend Drama Is Now Far Behind Her, ''Thank F--k''

Image result for about adele

Let's give a big, warm hello to the newly candid Adele!

The 27-year-old singer has famously kept her private life under wraps. But in her first in-depth interview in nearly three years, the "Hello" artist is opening up about music, motherhood and her favorite musicians.

In a 90-minute conversation with i-D magazine, Adele confessed that she doesn't have a Facebook and she's not on Netflix. However, she's a huge fan of Teen Mom,The Walking Dead and American Horror Story.

As for singing around the house, she tries to keep it to a minimum. The proud mom admits, however, that her son loves "Row Row Row Your Boat."

Lucky for us, this was only the beginning of a wide-ranging interview fans will appreciate greatly. Take a look at five must-read tidbits we just couldn't get enough of.

1. The Ups and Downs of Motherhood: When making her upcoming album 25, Adele admits that it was more than a little difficult to leave her son at home. "It's f--king hard. I thought it would be easy. 'Everyone f--king does it, how hard can it be?' Ohhhhh...I had no idea. It is hard but it's phenomenal," she shared. "It's the greatest thing I ever did. He makes me be a d--khead, and he makes me feel young and there's nothing more grounding than a kid kicking off and refusing to do what you're asking of them. It used to be that my own world revolved around me, but now it has to revolve around him."

2. Always Remembering Amy Winehouse: One of Adele's favorite artists was the late "Rehab" crooner. She recalls watching the recent documentary Amy and having strong emotions following the film. "I loved her and I went through my own massive grieving process as her fan. I'd finally got to a place where I felt really great about the impact she'd had on my life, in every way," she revealed. "I felt really, really fond of it all. But then I read this review of [the film] and that made me go and see it."

So what did she think of it?

"I love watching her, but I kind of wish I hadn't seen it," she confessed. "But you know, I love Amy. I always have, I always will. Do you know what makes me super sad? That I'm never going to hear her voice again, other than how I've heard it."

3. Heart Fixer: Long before providing emotional lyrics and songs fit for any heartache in her fans' lives, Adele knew she wanted to do something heart-related. "I wanted to fix people's hearts," she shared when discussing her old goals to become a heart surgeon. She even enrolled at Balham's Chestnut Grove School. So what stopped her? "Fun—and boys," the "Skyfall" songbird shared. "I gave up on it. My heart wasn't in it anymore."


4. Swiftie at Heart: During her lengthy conversation, Adele recalls an afternoon where she hung out with One Republic frontman Ryan Tedder. A song came up and they both couldn't get enough of it. "I was like, 'I love this song, who did this?' and he's like 'Max,' and I'm like, 'Oo's Max?' and he's like 'Max Martin!' and I'm like, 'Oo's Max Martin?" Adele shared, the magazine apparently taking liberties with her strong accent.

The catchy tune? "Trouble" by Taylor Swift .

5. "Hello's" True Meaning: As soon as Adele's new single premiered last week, people couldn't help but speculate about real meaning of those hurts-so-good lyrics.

One thing is for sure: It's not an apology to a guy she used to date. "Oh, god no. That's over and done with, thank f--k. That's been over and done with for f--king years," she shared. "No, it's not about anyone specifically. It's about friends, ex-boyfriends, it's about myself, it's about my family. It's also about my fans as well. I feel like everyone thinks I'm so far away and I'm not. Everyone thinks I live in f--king America, I don't."

She continued, "The song is about hurting someone's feelings but it's also about trying to stay in touch with myself, which sometimes can be a little bit hard to do. It's about a yearning for the other side of me. When I'm away, I really, really miss my life at home. The way that I feel when I'm not in England, is desperation. I can't breathe anywhere else."
 

Sample text

Sample Text

 
Blogger Templates