Adele Read online

  Certainly, she had set a high bar for performers at future ceremonies. The Adele effect is one that all will want to repeat each year, but it will be a tall order to make that one happen. Even Adele herself would need to work hard and have a bit of luck to define a Brits ceremony so strongly again. But at least she can say she has already done it.

  The next high-profile live performance of ‘Someone Like You’ from Adele came at the iTunes Festival at London’s Roundhouse in July. Adele was back to performing after at last having been told by doctors that she was over her bout of laryngitis. She’d announced the good news a couple of days before the show during an interview with her beloved BBC Radio 1 friend Chris Moyles. Adele gave a brief description of the problem. ‘It’s basically a hole in your vocal cord but I sang through it so that’s why it popped. I’m better now. It’s fine, I got the all clear,’ she said. She had been scared when she first realised she had lost her voice. ‘It’s never happened before. My voice went off, like a tap,’ she said. She had to sit in silence for nine days. Caffeine, alcohol and cigarettes were all banned during this period. Adele said that in order to make her wishes understood she had to have ‘a chalkboard around my neck. Like an old school mime. Like a kid in the naughty corner. Like a Victorian mute.’ On one particular occasion, her desire to communicate had become almost overwhelming. Typically for Adele, it was a particularly exciting episode of the BBC soap opera EastEnders that so excited her. However, the issue was not one she felt she could laugh about at its peak, when she had begun to wonder whether she would ever sing again. What a relief it was for her not to lose the gift that she had only just begun to use professionally and which had given her astounding levels of fame and fortune so quickly. Losing one’s voice for good is a fear that haunts many singers. Few have come as close as Adele to genuinely believing that the nightmare will come true. But, if her performance at the iTunes gig was anything to go by, she was entirely restored.

  ‘This song changed my life, it’s my most amazing achievement,’ she said, introducing ‘Someone Like You’ as the closing song of the set. ‘I’m singing for you guys so thank you very, very much for coming. I really do appreciate it, it means the world to me – so thank you very, very much. This is “Someone Like You”. Have a wonderful night and get home safe, yeah?’ She seemed to be curiously calm and collected during the first verse, even pulling a cheeky smile between lines. During the bridge to the first chorus, she seemed more moved and involved. After the middle eight, she smiled to the audience and, removing the microphone from its stand, asked the audience, ‘Sing it to me?’ They did so with enthusiasm, and she joined in with them mid-chorus. ‘One more time,’ she said, setting up a new choral sing-along. ‘Roundhouse, thank you so much,’ she said, as the audience applauded the end of the song. With her emotion bubbling, she added, ‘Thank you, I’ll see you soon. I’ll be back in September.’ To keep them going, an EP featuring a selection of tracks from her performance was released on iTunes. One critic wrote of the EP with admiration, concluding, ‘She keeps right on thrilling.’

  That night had been a barnstorming performance from Adele, with the usual banter including an observation that her ex-boyfriend would probably be watching the show on television. She crowned that thought by raising a middle finger to the cameras. Between songs she sipped on a warm honey drink to help her vocal cords. ‘I’d rather be drinking red wine,’ she told her fans. She also covered the Bonnie Raitt single ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ and the Cure’s ‘Lovesong’, as well as performing plenty of hits of her own. It was a triumphant return to the stage after her illness. ‘I’m really relieved,’ she later said. ‘And it went great and my voice ain’t hurting, so I’m really pleased.’

  Any doubts that she would return impaired were taken away when she launched into ‘Hometown Glory’ from the wings. At the end of the first verse, the song paused as she walked on-stage to delighted cheers and screams from her fans. ‘’Ello!’ she said cheekily, before launching back into the song. In doing so, she swiftly encapsulated the contrast between her singing voice and persona and her speaking voice. That was why the audience loved her, as well as her ability.

  She had been on witty form throughout the set. Having chastised herself for swearing too much between songs, she sure enough managed to swear again soon after taking herself to task. ‘I bet I fuck this up,’ she said. ‘Oh, shit! I swore again, said I wouldn’t do it!’ When she introduced ‘If It Hadn’t Been Love’, she said, ‘It’s about shooting your wife – something I’ve felt like doing to some of my ex-boyfriends.’ She also cracked a joke about Beyonce’s hair when the superstar had played the previous month at Glastonbury. The audience loved it all. Adele was well aware of how entertaining her between-song chatter was for the audience. She said it was pure nerves that drove her onwards. This loquacious side of her character was one she felt she inherited from her grandmother. ‘I get so nervous on stage I can’t help but talk,’ she said. ‘I try. I try telling my brain, Stop sending words to the mouth. But I get nervous and turn into my grandma. Behind the eyes it’s pure fear. I find it difficult to believe I’m going to be able to deliver.’

  Adele’s outspoken chattiness had begun to carry more weight as she moved from star into superstar territory. Her words would garner so much attention and discussion that they would sometimes place her at the centre of a media storm. This was just one of the costs of fame. Luckily for Adele, she felt fairly comfortable at her newfound level of celebrity.

  chapter eight

  fame’s many faces

  Some pop stars can go years without dipping their toes into controversy or without saying anything remotely amusing or insightful. On a good day, Adele can scarcely go a paragraph without entertaining and provoking. It is as if all the personality and opinion lacking in bland pop stars was handed in full to Adele. Witness her robust remarks about taxation in 2011: ‘I’m mortified to have to pay 50 per cent,’ she said. ‘While I use the NHS, I can’t use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are shit and I’ve gotta give you, like, four million quid – are you having a laugh?’

  This was truly headline-grabbing talk. To say the world was not bursting with sympathy would be an understatement. That de facto 21st-century barometer of the public mood, Twitter, featured outbursts against Adele from angry users. ‘That quote from Adele moaning about her tax bill and slagging off public schools has really pissed me off,’ read one. Another user wrote: ‘Got my paycheque today. Looking at the amount I take home after tax and national insurance is just depressing.’ Other users were more succinct, describing Adele as ‘silly’. Music fans rarely fall over with sympathy when they hear popular artists complain about the trappings of fame. But Adele was hardly alone. When U2 moved their business interests out of Ireland and in doing so reduced their tax bills, many were disgusted. Some protestors even disrupted live performances by the Irish rock giants. The Rolling Stones spent time in the south of France to avoid British tax. Non-musical stars to complain about tax have included actor Michael Caine and Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton.

  It’s not something that appeals to fans. As far back as the Beatles in the 1960s with their track ‘Taxman’, and the Kinks who also complained in song about high tax rates, audiences have rarely taken well to bands complaining about money. This highlights a wider issue facing wealthy musicians – how to stay in touch with the masses of fans who dipped into their pockets to hand them that haul. One of the challenges for musicians is to continue speaking, and singing, sentiments that do not alienate them from their fans. In Adele’s case, the press, naturally, went to town on the comments. The media is so frustrated by the tendency of many celebrities to dodge controversy that, when one does speak out on an issue, journalists leap all over the story. A Guardian writer tackled each section of Adele’s outburst. On the NHS, he reminded Adele that unless taxes were paid it would disappear. As for public transport, he argued that, as she had said she does not use it, the complaint a
bout late trains was hollow. He argued that recent statistics showed most state schools are not ‘shit’ and that it was tax revenue that prevented them from becoming so.

  The traditionally right-wing Daily Telegraph was more sympathetic. James Delingpole noted, ‘Adele, your openness, fearlessness and integrity puts the rest of your industry to shame.’ Such support was rare, though. Many pointed out that Adele’s musical career had been helped by the fact she attended the state-funded BRIT School. The Daily Mirror’s iconic columnist Tony Parsons wrote, ‘Everybody loves Adele – until she starts talking about tax.’ But he wasn’t exactly in the opposing camp. Like many of the more reasoned observers at the time, he understood how someone paying 50 per cent tax could be frustrated by such a burden. He also dismissed those who were suggesting that Adele could leave the country if she did not like it. After all, he said, she would then be making no tax contribution at all.

  Perhaps the most supportive voice, and almost certainly the most surprising one, came from the thinktank the Adam Smith Institute (ASI). The fact that such an august organisation was even discussing Adele showed how widely the ripples from her comments had spread. The ASI said that there was nothing strange in Adele’s feelings and that they were shared by many Brits across the social spectrum. ‘There are lots of people out there who wonder why they have to cough up so much of the money they earn just to pay for late trains and bad schools,’ it said. ‘Welcome to the club, Adele.’

  The storm that had been created was not entirely fair. Adele had built her career the hard way and from humble roots. Her nature was in no way greedy at all, as those closest to her have attested. She has shared her success, in all senses of the word, with her loved ones. As well as supporting her mother, she has helped out other family members and has taken time out from her fame, turning down lucrative offers, to spend afternoons with her old friends. Her long-term aspirations, too, seemed to show a genuine character less interested in money than she was in happiness and sincerity. ‘I feel like I’m here to be a mum,’ she has said. ‘I wanna look after someone and be looked after, give my all to someone in marriage and have a big family, have a proper purpose.’

  The British music scene needs characters and controversy. It would be a sad day if one of our most entertaining and forthright personalities felt intimidated into avoiding sensitive subjects. Journalists who bemoan anodyne celebrities should not jump on those who do put their heads above the parapet or they will find that there will be nobody left to inject a bit of charisma into the music business.

  It is worth pausing at this stage to consider the pace at which the progression in Adele’s career and level of recognition was travelling. Unknown at 19, Adele was known in British music circles by the time she turned 20. In the 12 months that followed that anniversary, she became, among music fans, an international star. She managed – through a combination of effort and inherent tendency – to remain as normal as possible amid the changes. For instance, she was not won over by the celebrity restaurants that she had the opportunity to visit. ‘I went to the Ivy, I hate it, I think it’s shit,’ she told interviewer Liz Jones. ‘And Nobu. They are all rubbish.’ Instead, as we have seen, she said she preferred an afternoon in the park with her longstanding friends. They drank cider, reminisced about old times and generally had a good giggle. In as far as it was possible, it was as if Adele had never become famous. She stuck with her old friends because she did not know any different. To her it was not a question of choosing between her showbusiness friends and her existing ones. There was room for both in her life. She could move in famous circles and also step back into more familiar company.

  It wasn’t so obvious what room her life had for love in 2011. She had admitted to dating some well-known – but unnamed – people. ‘I’ve been on a few dates with celebrities but I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘You go out and everyone looks at you both. I’m not going to say who. We go to really established places that know how to keep their fucking mouths shut. But then, everyone wants to fuck a celebrity so I wouldn’t trust them.’

  She was asked what her ‘type’ of man is, but replied that she prefers to not limit herself in that sense. ‘I don’t have a type,’ she told Glamour. ‘Never have. Older, but not as in 50. Not younger than me. I’m pretty young so it would be like fucking Justin Bieber! Any colour. Any shape. But they’ve got to be funny.’ Asked to name a famous man she currently fancied, she joined in the royal-wedding spirit that dominated 2011 after Prince William married Kate Middleton. For Adele, it was William’s younger brother who carries the most allure. ‘I’m after Prince Harry,’ she said. ‘I know I said I wouldn’t go out with a ginger, but it’s Prince Harry! I’d be a real duchess then. I’d love a night out with him, he seems like a right laugh.’

  Certainly, Harry’s more wild and unpredictable ways would have been a good fit for Adele. The thought of cockney, outspoken Adele joining the British monarchy was irresistible. It’s a shame it’s so unlikely to happen. She also said, in February 2011, that she was beginning to date a funnyman. ‘It’s early days,’ she said of the relationship. ‘He wants to be a comedian. He makes me laugh.’ Given how hearty and memorable her laugh is, it brought a smile to the lips of many to think of her dating someone who could have her cackling regularly. She added, ‘We’re still getting on, so, yeah, it’s nice.’

  What of the rumours linking her in 2011 to rapper Kanye West? Adele and West had first met at the Grammys in 2009. That night, as he presented Adele with an award, he told her that he had cried while listening to her first album. ‘I think his honesty threw her because he explained that her lyrics describe the heartache he felt over his mum’s death in 2007 perfectly, as well as how he often feels at the end of a relationship.’ The stories were sourced to unnamed ‘insiders’ and so could not be verified one way or the other. ‘It’s no secret that Adele is happier than she’s been in a long time,’ said one quoted in Look. In fact, the pair had traded public expressions of professional admiration as far back as 2008. Writing on his blog, West had mentioned her song ‘Chasing Pavements’. He wrote, ‘This shit is dope!’

  Adele was touched by this vote of confidence from such a respected musical talent. ‘I’m amazed,’ she said. ‘He’s like a megastar. I’d like to collaborate with him too.’

  This was far from the only time that she had mentioned a desire to collaborate with another well-known artist. A longstanding feature of her career has been to publicly float the idea of such creative hook-ups. ‘I wanna make a bluegrass record so I would like to do that with Jack White,’ she said of the White Stripes man she did ‘Many Shades of Black’ with.

  Other acts have independently spoken of wanting to duet with Adele. Hardly surprising, given the scale of critical respect for her and the commercial potential she carries. Alicia Keys was among the interested parties, saying of Adele, ‘She is a great lady, I definitely see that there is a strong possibility we will do something together,’ she said. However, the rumours that Keys and Adele were having a romantic relationship were dispelled. ‘I think my own husband started that rumour,’ she joked. She is married to rapper and artist Swizz Beatz. ‘He is so excited, we love Adele!’

  Beatz confirmed that he was hot on this idea, adding that he did not care whether he or someone else produced such a collaboration – he simply wanted it to happen so he could enjoy the result. ‘I just thought that, man, this would be a great moment for both of them because they have amazing styles and they both respect each other,’ he said. ‘They’re fans of each other. So let’s make this good for music.’ Asked how likely it was that such a duet would really happen, he said, ‘We’re looking good, we’re looking good, we’re looking good.’

  London-based rapper Wretch 32, who covered ‘Someone Like You’, also dreamed of collaborating with Adele. ‘That would be magnificent, but I think it would be impossible so I don’t even want to say it. She is one of the best this country has ever seen,’ he said.

  Then there was the duo
LMFAO, too. ‘We’d love to work with Adele,’ said Redfu, one half of the Los Angeles team.

  Back home in the UK rapper Tinie Tempah said in May 2011, ‘We’re working on something together. It’s going to be something amazing. You’ll all hear about it very soon.’

  But despite the constant speculation about a host of different duets – some of it prompted by Adele herself – she has herself dampened the excitement by suggesting that any sort of studio-based duet was not on the immediate cards for her. ‘I think most duets always go unnoticed and I don’t think anyone’s ever gonna do one as good as Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell,’ she said. ‘But, saying that, I think Estelle and Kanye on “American Boy” was great and I loved “No Air” by Chris Brown and Jordin Sparks.’

  Estelle later spoke with awe of how Adele’s music was proving such a hit, describing her as ‘winning across the world’. Yet in terms of collaborations in the recording studio, Adele pretty much ruled them out for good. ‘I’m not doing any collaborations,’ she said. ‘I think I ruin collaborations. I love to sing with people live, rather than on record.’ However, she added, ‘If I could do one with anyone – Robbie? Any day, I love a bit of Robbie.’

  She also talked widely about her likes and dislikes, revealing as she did what was at the heart of her musical vision. ‘I am in love with Gaga and Rihanna and Drake and all that, but I wouldn’t be like, “Let’s do a song like [Drake’s] ‘Find Your Love’,”’ she told RWD. ‘I love that Chipmunk and Tinchy [Stryder] and all these lot are doing so well but I hate that they’re having to rap over Swedish dance music. I find it really discouraging. I want to make organic music, just me and a band in a room, sticking to my roots. Whether it succeeds or not, at least I can hold my head high.’ It was an approach shared by another new young artist, Laura Marling, on her 2010 album I Speak Because I Can. ‘I’m such a fan of Laura Marling and always was before she even released her first album,’ Adele told the BBC. ‘She just gets better. She leaves me wanting more and I’m always really curious about her songs. Sometimes I can relate to them but sometimes I don’t understand. She constantly leaves me curious. That’s what I like in an artist. She really sticks to her guns.’ She had been speaking about Marling’s music for a few years. Indeed, in 2008, Adele had plugged her during an interview with Digital Spy, quipping that she was doing so for musical credibility. ‘She’s on my MySpace,’ she said. ‘She’s a brand-new artist – I’m trying to be really cool by mentioning her!’ It was a cute, self-deprecating endorsement from a woman who knew her words carried weight, but was not so arrogant as to believe she was some sort of musical prophet.