Adele

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  In November 2008, Adele won in the Best Jazz category of the Urban Music Awards. She was nominated in the Q magazine awards in the Best Breakthrough category, though she missed out to Duffy. Another nomination came from the MOBO (Music of Black Origin) awards, in the Best Female category.

  Meanwhile, she was living in a new home after a July 2008 move. Taking advantage of her new riches, Adele would attempt to go it alone and live in independent splendour. However, the sweet family girl inside won the day and she was soon back with Penny. The initial move had been to an apartment in west London. Adele tried to play it down. ‘It’s just a one-bedroom flat in Notting Hill above a shop,’ she said. ‘My [step]dad works for Wickes, so I should be able to get cheap DIY stuff. I get lonely sometimes but I love it.’ However, the quality of the property and the love she brought to it made it a nicer project than her self-deprecating description made out. ‘It looks like it is straight out of the film, in a row of white houses,’ she said.

  With her newfound independence, Adele took driving lessons. ‘I learned to drive, but that didn’t really work,’ she said. ‘Apparently I’m a very spatially aware, considerate driver, according to my driving instructor. I didn’t keep up my lessons. I was recovering from a severe breakup, so I was drinking a lot. I imagine I was over the limit for most of my lessons!’

  Adele also started to cook for herself. Early meals she whipped up in her new kitchen included chilli con carne, stir fries and lasagne. For Christmas, she invited Penny over for dinner. ‘I’m going to attempt to do a proper Christmas dinner with loads of roasties and those little sausages with bacon wrapped round them – I love them,’ she said. As for festive decorations, Adele was straight to the point in describing what she had gone for. ‘I’ve got a fake Christmas tree ’cos after a while I think the real ones smell like piss.’ Indeed, when asked what epitomised the festive spirit, Adele’s answer was that it was the Christmas specials of the soap operas. ‘You know it’s Christmas when someone dies in a soap,’ she said. ‘Do you remember when Tiffany hit her head on the kerb on Christmas Day trying to escape from Grant? I was about ten and I was so distraught because I didn’t know anyone who’d died until my grampy. I felt like I knew Tiffany. I remember going to the bathroom upstairs and being really shocked and shaking and crying.’ For Adele, the Christmas of 2008 was a calmer affair.

  The following July, she made some changes to her home for the arrival of a dog. ‘I’m getting a new floor put in my flat in a couple of weeks ’cos I’m getting ready for my little doglet,’ she told the Daily Star. ‘He’s so cute!’ Her dog, a dachshund called Louis, nearly ended up with a weirder name. For a while, she considered naming him Britney because he was born the same night as she was watching Britney Spears in concert. ‘I almost called him Britney even though he was a boy. [But] it only lasted a few hours until my hangover stopped,’ she said. Then she toyed with calling him Aaron Lennon after her favourite Tottenham Hotspur player. Once she settled on Louis he became a fixture of Adele’s life. He was attacked by a Jack Russell in the park, but in the main he was a hassle-free friend for Adele. She said that if she ever got another dog she would call it Ella, after the jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald.

  The more immediate future contained another move – this time she was going to live in a new place with Penny after missing the warmth of their proximity. It was in November 2009 that she decided enough was enough. ‘After my first record I moved out of my mum’s and moved to Notting Hill on my own. My life fell apart. My phone got cut off, my credit card got cut off, the house was a mess. It was awful. I couldn’t function without my mum so I moved back in with her.’ She was aware that this move in a sense represented an admission that she had failed in her quest to live alone – but she didn’t care. ‘I’d rather be defeated than one day come in and the rats would be eating me,’ she said. ‘My mum and I don’t live in a tiny place. It’s a big apartment, she can be at one end and me at the other.’

  Penny could not have been prouder of her daughter – wherever she chose to live. Her girl’s career was building fast, but Penny was as impressed by Adele’s character and loving nature. The bonds they had formed as Penny raised Adele single-handed remained strong, even as the little girl became a young woman, revered across the world for her music. How quickly Adele had become known and loved – the popularity of 19 was immense, but that success would be dwarfed by her follow-up.

  Following her Grammy glory, Adele continued to receive nominations in other award ceremonies. She received three for the 2009 Brits – for Best British Female, Best British Breakthrough and Best British Single in ‘Chasing Pavements’, although, this time, none translated into awards. Later in the year, she received a different, and slight unconventional, honour. Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote to her to thank her for the part her music was playing in keeping the British public’s mood buoyant in difficult financial times. Adele was surprised to receive it, but also strangely touched. ‘It was really nice. It went, “With the troubles that the country’s in financially, you’re a light at the end of the tunnel.” It was amazing. I’m fighting the credit crunch on my own!’

  In 2009, Adele continued to receive offers for side projects. One of these was a request from Israel to use ‘Hometown Glory’ in an advertisement to endorse a new egg timer. It would have earned her a nice, simple payday, but Adele turned it down. She did not want her music associated with the product. ‘They were paying really good money but I was like, “No”,’ she said. ‘Even though nobody in England or America would probably ever see it, I definitely had to turn that down.’

  She did take up an offer to make a cameo performance on the long-running American television show Ugly Betty. A Golden Globe-winning series, it had become a hit around the world. Other famous celebs who have made cameo appearances include Naomi Campbell, Lindsay Lohan, Lucy Liu and Victoria Beckham. Adele appeared as herself, singing ‘Right As Rain’ at a photo shoot which three leading characters are working on for an assignment. She said it made her feel like a ‘superstar’ for moment. ‘It was like seconds on camera but, you know, I felt like Julia Roberts for the day!’ she added. ‘It was the best really.’

  Adele was following in Lindsay Lohan’s footsteps on Ugly Betty and Lohan remained a fan of Adele. In the same week as a Q interview, Lohan praised her online. ‘I love Adele’s “Rumour Has It” off her new record,’ she wrote on Twitter. ‘Such a good vibe to it. Makes me happy.’

  In the same week, Lily Allen also used Twitter to big up Adele. ‘So happy for Adele,’ she wrote. ‘So good when good things happen to nice people. CONGRATULATIONS ADELE on being No1EVERYFUCKINGWHERE! [sic].’

  Adele did indeed seem to be everywhere after her album 19 was released. People the world over had taken the songs to their hearts and most had done the same with the woman who had sung them. It was not just the richness of the songs and the power of her voice; Adele’s sincere and vulnerable personality had also struck a chord. However, if she seemed to be ‘everywhere’ after 19, then the reaction to her follow-up album would make her truly ubiquitous. It was to be nothing short of sensationally popular.

  chapter six

  the golden key

  adele spent her 21st birthday in the US. She had kicked off her mini tour at San Diego on 9 March 2009. She then played in Arizona, Austin, Houston and Cleveland before arriving in New York. She performed at the Roseland Ballroom on her birthday on 5 May. Then she flew to the west coast, where she co-headlined a show at the Hollywood Bowl with her idol Etta James. There were exciting times, a great way to be celebrating this milestone birthday in her life. And she went on to mark the occasion in style by naming her second album 21.

  Musically, Adele’s second album was influenced by a host of artists including country star Garth Brooks, early Dolly Parton, the Steeldrivers, Loretta Lynn and the Carter Family. ‘I hadn’t even heard of Garth Brooks until around 15 months ago,’ she said at the time of 21’s release. New folk stars Mumford & Sons, too, were a factor
in the developing flavour of her music. She said their music ‘literally goes into my chest and beats me up, and makes me completely fearless’.

  The other inspiration for the album was her latest ex-boyfriend. He was a man she never named, but who she described as ‘the most amazing person who has ever been in my life’. She had enjoyed an intense relationship with him. So the breakup naturally hit her hard. ‘It’s going to take me ten years to recover,’ she said in the painful aftermath of that relationship. This pessimistic self-diagnosis was understandable in part, given that at the time she had considered it her first genuine relationship. Part of the recovery process was the composition of her second album. It was a recording which would send her fame soaring to unimaginably high levels. ‘It broke my heart when I wrote this record, so the fact that people are taking it to their hearts is like the best way to recover,’ she said. She insisted on keeping his identity secret, saying, ‘It’s not interesting. If he were a celebrity, people would want to know.’

  What was known was that her partner had been an older, accomplished man. This was the first time she had dated such a character. As a result, the relationship had given her a new, mature perspective and interest. ‘It was the biggest deal in my entire life to date… He made me totally hungry… He was older, he was successful in his own right, whereas my boyfriends before were my age and not really doing much,’ Adele said. His influence on her had been cultural, too. She added, ‘He got me interested in film and literature and food and wine and travelling and politics and history and those were things I was never, ever interested in. I was interested in going clubbing and getting drunk.’ It was fitting that Adele grew in this sense during the relationship – for the one thing that most critics agreed on when her second album was unleashed was that she had matured.

  Musician and producer Ryan Tedder worked in the studio with her on many of the ideas and tracks that took shape on 21. He was abiding by the crucial principle of letting her keep in overall control. ‘I’m letting Adele be Adele,’ he told the BBC while they were still in the middle of recording sessions. ‘19, that album was so absolutely mind-blowing to me, so simple and beautiful that I don’t want myself as a fan to interfere with her sound. Yesterday the song we did was very much Adele – it was 10 per cent Ryan, 90 per cent Adele. [I told her,] “I don’t want to put you through the Ryan Tedder machine where you end up with a song that sounds as much like Ryan Tedder as it does Adele.”’

  At much the same time, Adele was saying that she was not going to hurry work on the album. ‘I’m writing it slowly but surely,’ she said. ‘You’re only as good as your next record so if you rush it you end up losing that little niche you’ve created for yourself and you’ll end up with a shit record.’ A few weeks earlier, she had also admitted she was worried about how her new work would be greeted by her existing fanbase. ‘I’m a bit scared. Obviously there are new avenues that I want to go down with the sound and I don’t want to leave behind the fans who might not like the new sound I am going for. So I’m a bit wary of that.’

  Adele claimed that, though it was the big dramas of life that were influencing and inspiring her writing, she could actually write a song about almost any event, however trivial. ‘The littlest things I can write about, it doesn’t have to be some drama. The littlest things – about not putting a cup in the dishwasher. I can write a song about that as well,’ she said. In the end, the album would deal with the bigger trials of existence.

  Though the title of the album followed the format of her debut, she had considered naming the album after one of its tracks – ‘Rolling in the Deep’. As she told Rolling Stone magazine, the song reflected one of the most significant things she felt she had lost with the breakup of her relationship, the reassurance that she had someone looking out for her in life. ‘The phrase “rolling in the deep” is sort of my adaptation of a kind of slang, slur phrase in the UK called “roll deep”, which means to have someone, always have someone that has your back and you’re never on your own. If you’re ever in trouble you’ve always got someone who’s going to come and help you fight it or whatever like that. And that’s how I felt in the relationship that the record’s about, especially “Rolling in the Deep”. That’s how I felt, you know, I thought that’s what I was always going to have and it ended up not being the case.’

  She not only had a change of mind about the album title but also about the emotional feel of its songs. She had originally wanted her second release to be a more upbeat piece of work. On reflection, she had found 19 to be too serious. She felt it did not reflect her personality, which is ‘fun, cheeky, loud and sarcastic’. Certainly, the Adele of the songs on 19 was an entirely different character to the one she showed in her interviews and was in her private life. She wanted to show that she has a lighter and spirited side. To that end, she was partially successful. That lighter side does show its face at several points on the album. More broadly, though, there is no doubt this is a successful, wonderful piece of work. In both its sadder, slower, happier and more lively moments, it consistently impresses. Each song has its own strengths and charms: together they unite to form one of the most enjoyable, emotional and impressive albums to be released by a UK artist for many, many years.

  21 opens with ‘Rolling in the Deep’. This makes for a defiant, almost rallying, start to the record. Adele has said this song is the musical equivalent of saying something in the heat of the moment and ‘word vomiting’. Thematically and musically, she is serving notice from the off that 21 is a different, fuller, more brassy piece of work than her debut had been. The song also has a bigger production than anything on 19. Lyrically, she is berating her ex-partner throughout, telling him that they could have had it all but that he has thrown it away. Not only that, she vows to unleash revenge on him. He will, she warns him, reap just what he had sown after the way he had played her heart. Given her reputation as one who only sings the gently sad, heartbroken tunes of a broken woman, ‘Rolling in the Deep’ is clear proof that there is more to her than that. She has commented that this song was a ‘fuck you’ to the suggestion that, as a single woman, she would not amount to anything.

  ‘Rolling in the Deep’ was produced by Paul Epworth. It is, in Adele’s words, a ‘dark, bluesy gospel disco tune’. The fact it was produced by a stalwart of the indie music scene is clear to the listener: it has more attitude to it than anything on 19. This was a musical collaboration that Adele was at first anxious about. Epworth, who has worked with Primal Scream, Maximo Park and the Rapture, is very much grounded in the indie sound and, as Adele says, she is ‘known for being very pop’. This was a meeting of opposite styles and minds. As such, she could not help but wonder to herself how it would turn out and was delighted to find it was ‘a match made in heaven’. She found he was full of ideas and that he brought the best out in her voice. ‘There are notes in that song that I never even knew I could hit.’ Vocally, it is indeed her most powerful moment to date. She belts out the defiant lyrics, remaining totally dominating in the song’s rich musical soundtrack. In every sense, then, the album’s opener is a declaration of strength. As the listener first luxuriates in its warmth, they quickly are filled with excitement at what more there is to come on 21.

  Far from toning down the music or rhetoric in the second track, Adele essentially carries the spirit of ‘Rolling in the Deep’ into ‘Rumour Has It’. She taunts the object of her previous song now, mocking the disastrous turn that his relationship with the woman he left her for has taken. She turns a line around to give the story of the song a twist. From saying that the rumour is that her ex-partner is leaving his new girl for Adele, at the close of the song she suggests that it’s her leaving him for the new girl. Musically, this is another up-tempo song and it is also heavy on percussion. She described it as a ‘bluesey, pop, stomping song’. On this form, her fans will hope that long will she stomp. She said the lyrics were inspired by nights out with her friends in which they would bombard her with the latest gossip about he
r ex-partner. She knows some people took the ‘rumour’ of the title to refer to the relentless cycle of media rumours. She insisted it refers to the way her own friends often believe rumours about her, a fact that she said leaves her ‘pretty mortified’. The song, which in some ways is reminiscent of Duffy, was produced by Ryan Tedder.

  Having turned the tables with her lyrics in track two, she put a song called ‘Turning Tables’ in third position. This was a song that would be more familiar to fans of 19. She co-wrote it with Tedder and it was produced by Jim Abbiss, who has worked with Arctic Monkeys among others. It is gentle, sparse, mournful and slow. Looking back on the relationship she is leaving, she sings that she can no longer bear being under his thumb and being the focus of his games that see him turning tables. She feels she could not even breathe while under his spell. Though leaving him is a challenge, she will brave the storms that the task brings with it and will walk away. This is a beautiful song, with the piano, strings and Adele’s voice combining to create an experience that is cleansing. However, it was born out of anger. Adele arrived at the studio one day ranting about a man. ‘Who the fuck does he think he is, always turning tables on me?’ she asked. Ryan Tedder seized on the term, and together they built it into the song.

  In ‘Don’t You Remember’, Adele returned to the more vulnerable soul of 19. It was, fittingly enough, a song that was difficult to forget, such was its power. Here, she is shaken and stunned to have lost her lover. She had no idea, she sings, of the state they were in. She has had to endure the abrupt ending of their relationship, but she hopes that, if he remembers what had first made him love her, he will come back. This is a traditional ballad, one whose mellow verses build into a big chorus. It was one of the last songs she wrote for the album. She did so after realising that, as she looked over the songs about her ex, she had ‘made him out to be a complete twat’. She chastised herself for this she said in an interview, suddenly feeling she had been ‘childish’. So she wrote a song that recalled the glorious times they had together, when she was completely besotted and electrified by him.