Adele Magazine

Gl lo o ry May 2016

From Hometown Girl to Hometown Glory Inside the Singer’s Incredible Year

EXCLUSIVE

SINGER SPILLS ON THE PROCESS BEHIND THE BALLADS

Hello, Adele

road to

Discovery A dele 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.

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.

“There was no musical heritage in our family,” Adele told The Telegraph in a 2008 interview. “Chart music was all I ever knew.

Photo Courtesy of 959kissfm

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Chasing

Success Photo Courtesy of People

A

dele’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 on Saturday 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.

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,” 21 placed 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 21 staying 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.”

Photo Courtesy of MTV

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‘25’ and

Alive

O

n 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 makeup 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.

tion 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.

Adele’s second single off of 25 was “When We Were Young,” a meditation on looking back and growing older. In 2016, she performed the ballad “All I Ask,” co-written by Bruno Mars, on the 58th Annual Grammy Awards while also dealing with technical glitches from the accompanying piano.

“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 collecPhoto Courtesy of WSPA

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Setting F i re to the C harts The Method behind

D

The Madness

uring the February 12 edition of 60 Minutes, Adele confessed to Anderson Cooper, “I find it quite difficult to think that there’s, you know, like, 20 million people listening to my album that I wrote very selfishly to get over a breakup. I didn’t write it being like ‘This is going to be a hit.’”

Cooper echoed her statement for emphasis: “You really wrote it to help you get over something.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “So the fact that so many people are interested in that, and want to cry to it or want to feel strong to it, or whatever, I find really, it’s like little old me.” Adele’s self-deprecation is part of what makes her so likeable. But, in reality, it’s the pieces of little old her she puts into her songs that have made

20 million people respond to her albums. As pop critic Ann Powers put it in an end-of-2011 music discussion in the online magazine Slate, “Singers like Adele make ‘ordinary’ pro¬found. Little details matter in their songs.”

Emotional catharsis can be an unruly thing, but Adele expresses her pain in ways that resonate with listeners the world over who’ve been there, too.

Said Fraser T. Smith, who produced “Set Fire to the Rain” and co-wrote the song with her, “I could lie and say that we had a master plan with this, but the truth is that she’s able to perfectly capture that raw emotion in a way that’s both relatable and original.”

Take the song’s central image. Many an entry in the pop songbook has used rain as a symbol of melancholy and fire as a symbol of primal, all-consuming feeling. But Adele

combined the two familiar images into one that pushes into more dramatic territory; she’s defying nature by sheer force of will, lighting the very rain on fire.

“She sets the bar incredibly high when it comes to lyrics,” said Smith, “so we went backwards and forwards until each line felt as good as it could. She drove most of the words, and [I’m still struck by] how she can deliver lines which are pretty simple yet contain such amazing imagery.”

Adele told Vogue’s Jonathan Van Meter, “I have no idea where it comes from. I don’t read literature.

I don’t have a very big capacity for language and words. I’m quite limited when it comes to just chatting.

But my head

comes alive when I’m writing music, and I start using words and describing emotions I had no idea existed in me.”

Even though her song ideas originate as self-expression, she’s seen what they do to other people when she performs them.

She related to Van Meter, “When I sing ‘Someone Like You,’ I know that every single person in the room will be able to relate to it. That’s where that emotional connection comes from. I have sympathy for myself, I have sympathy for them, they have sympathy for me, and I know that we are all there knowing exactly how each other feels.”

Photo Courtesy of Vogue Magazine

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Her Triumphant RETURN

Photo Courtesy of Saturday Night Live

H

er voice troubles actually began in January, right at the outset of the world promotional tour for 21.

“I’ve been singing properly every day since I was about fifteen or sixteen,” she says, “and I have never had any problems with my voice, ever. I’ve had a sore throat here and there, had a cold and sung through it, but that day it just went while I was onstage in Paris during a radio show. It was literally like someone had pulled a curtain over it.” She flew to London the next morning to see her doctor and was diagnosed with acute laryngitis.

Adele and her team began to suspect that the problem was more serious. “I knew my voice was in trouble,” she says, “and obviously I cried a lot. But crying is really bad for your vocal cords, too!” When

word spread in the insular music industry that Adele had throat problems, other artists’ managers began calling with the same piece of advice: Go see Steven Zeitels, M.D., in Boston, widely considered to be the preeminent throat surgeon in the world. (Indeed, he is currently working with Julie Andrews, trying

to restore her pipes after a surgery by another doctor that diminished one of the great singing voices of all time.) Zeitels discovered a polyp

on one of Adele’s vocal cords that would require surgery. “He made me feel safe,” she says.

Adele’s surgery was on November 3, and now it is nearly six weeks later. Is she singing yet? “I’ve started humming again,” she says. “I’ve been given the all-clear to start building my throat. I hadn’t sung for about five weeks before my surgery, and then I was in three weeks of total silence, so I have to build my voice back up to be able to belt again like I could before.”

A week later, just a couple of days before Christmas, I get Adele on the phone to check on her progress. “I have been singing for the last two or three days,” she says cheerfully. I really thought if my voice changed an octave it would go lower. But it still sounds like me. *Photo Courtesy of Instagram @Adele

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