More generally, comparisons with Amy Winehouse continued – often in the most tenuous of ways. For instance, one reviewer wrote that, by releasing a second album that was better than her debut, Adele had followed in the tradition of Winehouse, whose second album Back to Black was, in the opinion of the reviewer, superior to her debut Frank. The fact that countless musical acts have improved between their debut and follow-up album was not enough to get in the way of another comparison between Adele and Winehouse.
The commercial and critical rewards Adele took from 21 were obvious and mighty. However, such an emotional, wrought album had also taken a lot out of her, as had the experience that influenced the writing of the album. ‘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. ’Cause I’m still not fully recovered. It’s going to take me ten years to recover, I think, from the way I feel about my last relationship,’ she explained. If nothing else, he had influenced an almightily great album. Even if Adele never recorded another song, 21 would guarantee her place in the hearts of millions of music lovers for good.
But, as far as Jonathan Dickins was concerned, this was just the start for Adele. ‘She’s made a great record that we’re immensely proud of,’ he said. ‘And it’s just another step in a long, fruitful career. Everything we try to do – every decision – is absolutely focused on the long term.’
Given that Adele’s classic sound and style of music is one that definitely improves with age – unlike the modish pop sounds of some artists her age – it is to be hoped that Adele will continue and enjoy the sort of development that Dickins hoped for. The Winehouse comparisons have frustrated both Adele and her fans and nobody would want her to go off the rails as the ‘Rehab’ singer did. Fortunately, there was little sign of that in the wake of 21.
Dickins was far from being alone in predicting that the album would lead to even bigger things for its young star. Her potential to be a worldwide sensation was only just beginning to be realised. ‘Really, we are just on our first single and we think there are probably five, so I think it’s just the beginning,’ Rick Rubin told Billboard of the star’s US campaign. ‘And she’s barely toured at all so really it’s in the baby stages. I think it’s a beautiful album that we’re all really proud of and it’s amazing that it’s connecting with people in the way that it is and we just hope it continues to do so. She is an incredible singer. She bares her soul in her songwriting, and it’s the real thing… She uses her vocal instrument in a way that we don’t get to hear a lot. What she is doing, it’s a very pure expression of herself and it resonates with people. There is no trickery involved. It’s a really honest album.’
Meanwhile, we keep returning to the relationship that prompted and influenced 21. Despite the astounding fortunes and fame that album brought her, Adele still wished she had given up music and stuck with the relationship. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for not making my relationship with my ex on 21 work, because he’s the love of my life,’ she told Out. ‘I would still be singing in the shower, of course, but yeah – my career, my friendships, my hobbies. I would have given up trying to be the best.’ The relationship left her with lots of hurt and tears, yet it also left a positive legacy. It would be the one that she measured all future boyfriends against. She described the rapport she and her ex-partner had with palpable and surprising emotional power. ‘He was my soul mate,’ she said. ‘We had everything, on every level we were totally right. We’d finish each other’s sentences and he could just pick up how I was feeling by the look in my eye, down to a T. We loved the same things, and hated the same things and we were brave when the other was brave and weak when the other one was weak – almost like twins, you know. And I think that’s rare when you find the full circle in one person and I think that’s what I’ll always be looking for in other men.’
She had taken steps to move on, even signing up to an online dating website in the hope of finding a new man. ‘I just signed up for eHarmony,’ she said. ‘I can’t put a photo of myself, so I don’t get any emails!’ Instead, she tried to find other ways of reaching closure. That process proved challenging. ‘I must have written him about five or six letters at different stages of the recovery. I’ve written, put in an envelope, stamped and everything, but never sent. I’ve got a little box of stuff that reminds me of us and they’re still in there.’
What an astonishing impact this man had on her life, and what a significant impact and influence he continued to play on her emotions and imagination. During her next major television appearance of 2011, Adele would be singing about him and thinking about him as she did. She could not help but wonder if he was among the audience as the nation was watching. Soon afterwards, the video of the performance would be watched by millions across the world. It was Adele at her very finest.
chapter seven
someone like us
it was an emotionally charged performance that would change Adele’s life forever.
The Brits 2011 were held at London’s vast o2 arena. With its 20,000 capacity and high ceilings, it has a grand and somewhat intimidating feeling. The ceremony was due a positive focus, as for so many years the most notable moments had been controversial rather than musical. Among these incidents had been the time Liam Gallagher tossed his award into the audience in 2010, the spat between Sharon Osbourne and Vic Reeves in 2008 and other such headline-grabbing moments of petulance as Jarvis Cocker interrupting Michael Jackson’s performance in 1996. How long had it been since an artist had dominated the evening for what really mattered: their performance?
On Tuesday, 15 February 2011, Adele might simply have been recovering from the pain of Valentine’s Day as a single woman. Instead, she was putting in a magnificent, spine-tingling appearance at the Brits. In front of some 16,000 at the venue and nearly six million watching from home, she would reach new heights as a live performer. In little more than three minutes, she would distil the most painful emotions all people experience at some point in life into song. Both the fans in the seating around the edge of the venue and many of the notoriously cynical music business bigwigs sitting around tables on the floor were to be stunned by her gut-wrenching performance.
Host James Corden had promised that his style on the night would be ‘warm and sensitive’. He was as good as his word. ‘There’s nothing quite like the feeling when you’re listening to a song written by someone you don’t know, who you’ve never met, who somehow manages to describe how you felt at a particular moment in your life,’ he said. ‘This next artist is able to do that time after time. It’s for that reason that she’s currently number one in an astonishing 17 countries. If you’ve ever had a broken heart, you’re about to remember it now. Here, performing “Someone Like You”, it’s the beautiful Adele.’
As she prepared to sing, Adele might have reflected on her various Brit experiences. The times she had watched the ceremony at home with her mother. The shows she attended in person as a fan, squeezed into the pit in front of the stage alongside fellow BRIT School pupils. Then came her appearance in 2009, when she was the winner of the first ever critics’ choice award. Since then, she had heard occasional whispers that she had not won that award through merit and that she had benefited from some sort of fix. This scepticism plagued modern Britain, stretching far and wide across the psyche of people who struggle to be pleased for those chasing and fulfilling their dreams.
Well, on this night she was going to answer all the cynics and critics in style. Wearing a vintage dress and fine diamond earrings, she certainly looked the part. The other live performers on the night had favoured huge productions. Take That had come on-stage surrounded by dancers in riot gear. Rihanna had sung with her usual full-on pomp and ceremony, while Plan B had reprised Take That’s lawless theme with a breathtaking production that included a dancer dressed as a policeman who ran on to the stage in flames, leaving many of those watching at home unable to decide at first whether it had be
en a stunt or a disaster. Adele’s performance could not have been more different. It was just her, a pianist and a light shower of glitter towards the end. This was not to be about gimmicks or attempts at controversy – it was to be about the music.
She looked particularly stunning as the camera swept to her. That would continue to be the case throughout the song, but one other aspect of her appearance would change radically. She stood with enormous poise at the beginning of the song. It seemed to those watching that her body language was successfully camouflaging her real feelings. She waved and pointed her arms a lot. As the song continued, particularly towards the end, her nerves came bubbling to the surface. Throughout, she was picked out by a single spotlight, standing next to the pianist. This was a truly, brilliantly old-fashioned performance. During the first chorus, where the vocals naturally take a step up in power, she seemed to give them a slightly bigger kick. The extent to which the audience was with her became clear as applause, cheers and screams of appreciation greeted the chorus. As the song drew to a close, that golden glitter rained over the stage. By this point, the emotion of the audience had reached its peak. Everything about the conclusion of the performance was raw and genuine. Pieces of glitter even got caught in the front of her hair and on her neck. During the final line, she pumped her fist to underscore the emotion of the song. As she sang the final words, it was as if she had come back to reality. She scrunched up one eye slightly bashfully. It was an amazing moment, this woman who was singing so brilliantly to thousands in person and millions at home was suddenly struck by girlish nerves, the sort that might strike a schoolgirl speaking in front of a class or at a school play. It was a look that said: ‘Was that OK?’ The answer would soon become obvious. Then her vocals were over and, as the piano part drew towards its conclusion, the tears that had been threatening to spill out for a while did just that.
‘Thanks,’ she mouthed to the audience as it roared with both delight and empathy. She had moved everyone, including herself, and the applause was as much to support her emotionally as it was to appreciate her professionally. The love and compassion that people felt for her was tangible. She then nervously bit her thumb, in one final act of vulnerable theatre. Immediately, the audience rose to its feet. At home, television viewers were similarly impressed, and flooded Twitter with statements of appreciation and awe.
The focus then returned to Corden. The sincerity of his introduction just a few minutes earlier had been clear. He had expected big things of her and she had more than delivered. ‘Wow,’ he said with a tone of disbelief, as the standing ovation continued around him. ‘Wasn’t that amazing? You can have all the dancers, the pyrotechnics, laser shows you want but, if you sound like that, all you need is a piano. Incredible.’ He spoke for the nation.
Adele’s verdict on the night was more concise: ‘Shat myself,’ she said.
Given the curious blend of scepticism and expectations which surround the Brits, there are few moments during it that create anything approaching a consensus among viewers. Adele impressed and moved just about everyone else with her visceral and vulnerable delivery. Talk about washing your emotional linen in public. Clearly, a large part of the emotion she had displayed was connected with the subject of her song – her ex-boyfriend. Later, speaking to ITV2, she offered more specific insight into what had gone into her performance. ‘I was really emotional by the end because I’m quite overwhelmed by everything anyway, and then I had a vision of my ex, of him watching me at home and he’s going to be laughing at me because he knows I’m crying because of him, with him thinking, Yep, she’s still wrapped around my finger,’ she said. The response from the audience had proved the tipping point, she said. ‘Then everyone stood up, so I was overwhelmed.’
It was not only a momentous time for her emotionally. Physically, too, she had been in a strange place before she even took to the stage. She had been on a health kick prior to the ceremony and a post-show party was not the first thing on her mind. ‘I’ve been on a detox, man!’ she said. ‘Five days without fags, I’m five days clean! I ain’t drinking, I ain’t smoking, no fizzy drinks, no sugar, no dairy, no spicy food, no citruses… no bloody nothing!’ She later revealed that even her beloved post-show glass or two of red wine was off the agenda. ‘I haven’t been well so I’ve been very boring tonight. I’ve had laryngitis so I’m not even supposed to be talking, never mind singing. It’s rubbish – no drinking, no talking and no partying.’
Vocal problems would continue to be a problem for her in the first half of 2011 and she would go on to talk about how she became quite concerned as the year went on. Even in February her frustration was clear in her interviews. The effect that live performances had on her was telling even without the extra burden of illness. She might make her talent seem effortless, but make no mistake about it – Adele always paid for her brilliance. Behind the scenes, she had to dig deep to build the confidence to sing. Indeed, Adele has admitted that she often gets extremely nervous prior to live performances. ‘I’m scared of audiences,’ she admitted soon after her Brits triumph. ‘One show in Amsterdam, I was so nervous I escaped out the fire exit,’ she recalled. ‘I’ve thrown up a couple of times. Once in Brussels, I projectile vomited on someone. I just gotta bear it. But I don’t like touring. I have anxiety attacks a lot.’
For a short time, Adele made many focus on what the Brits should always be about: the sheer brilliance that can be achieved in the UK’s music industry. In those three minutes, she more than repaid and vindicated the faith that had been shown in her when she won her critics’ choice award just a few years previously. The reaction took her fame and popularity to new heights. As soon as the performance was uploaded to YouTube, the video spread around the world like wildfire. People who had previously not heard of Adele were suddenly watching footage of her at her peak. As of the summer of 2011, this video had been watched nearly six million times. It had become a TV to YouTube crossover to rival the first audition of Britain’s Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle.
The mainstream media heaped praise on Adele. Her Telegraph cheerleader Neil McCormick was one of the first to commend her for ‘delivering a heart-rending ballad armed with nothing but a big voice, a monster melody, a piano and a shower of glitter’. Word spread around the world, with, for instance, the Seattle Post observing that Adele ‘looked genuinely moved at the end and you could feel the emotion that she put into that performance. It was stunning’. In many other newspapers and magazines, Adele was highlighted as the star not just of the night but of the moment in general. What an amazing response there was.
However, perhaps the true marker of the influence of her Brits performance came in the pop charts. The song had been outside of the Top 40 before her appearance but, as the nation wiped its collective eyes after watching her sing at the o2, many of them hit the download button, sending it back up the charts. It is quite usual for those who appear at the Brits to enjoy a boost in sales as a result, with 70 per cent increases being quite common, but nobody had ever got quite the response Adele had. ‘Someone Like You’ soared straight back to the top of the singles chart, where it dislodged Jessie J’s ‘Price Tag’. This meant Adele had two songs in the Top 5 simultaneously – ‘Rolling in the Deep’ was at UK No 4. She held the same positions in the album charts. 21 stayed at UK No 1, while 19 crept back to UK No 4. This was the first time since 1964 that one act had two positions in the Top 5 of both the single and albums chart at the same time. Adele was in good company – the act who previously achieved the same feat was the Beatles. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’ were their singles and the albums were With The Beatles and Please Please Me. Then the live version of ‘Someone Like You’ that Adele had sung was released on iTunes and quickly topped the chart there. Indeed, all of the live performances from that year’s awards were made available to download with proceeds going to the BRIT Trust.
The fact Adele held off a challenge in the singles chart from Lady Gaga, with ‘Born This Way’, o
nly made it more impressive. Gaga was gracious in the face of this, revealing during an interview on BBC radio what a fan she is of the girl of the hour. ‘I love Adele,’ she said. ‘I think Adele is wonderful and I’m so excited at the success she has had over the past couple of weeks with the Brits and everything. It’s so wonderful.’
Adele was similarly unstinting in her praise of fellow artists. Her simple performance had been praised and contrasted to the raunchier, louder performances by the likes of Rihanna, but Adele had herself been turned on by Rihanna’s appearance. ‘You look at someone like Rihanna and, my God, her thighs make me love her,’ she told the Daily Mirror’s Celebs on Sunday after the Brits. She had been out partying just a few months earlier, she said, when dancing along to Rihanna’s hit ‘What’s My Name?’ brought her an enormous sense of connection with the US star. ‘Over New Year’s and Christmas, I had time off and I went to all my friends’ parties singing it,’ she said. ‘Doing the dance moves, I was convinced I was Rihanna. She was possessing me with that song, I swear.’ Returning to the Brits, she also said she had been ‘inspired’ by Mumford & Sons, who shared the billing. The act’s appearance on the night had led to some commentators claiming that there was a ‘folk revival’ in the offing in the British music industry. Some of these noted folk influences in Adele’s music and included her in the trend.
Looking back later, Adele was still puzzled and overwhelmed by the entire Brits experience. ‘It’s really bizarre – at the Brit awards I was so frightened,’ she said. ‘I’ve never actually been so scared in my life but it ended up being the most life-changing night of my life. Everyone stood up. I’ve never been given a standing ovation by my peers and by the industry. It was amazing. I was really embarrassed when I was singing that song because I hate getting emotional about my ex-boyfriend. I’m fine about it now but I realised in that four minutes that actually I’m not fine about it. That’s why I broke down. I saw my manager and he looked proud and I love making him proud.’
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