Adele

• 1. Introduction

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  Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on the 5th of May 1988 in Tottenham, London, and by the time she turned 23, she had already done something no solo artist had managed in the United Kingdom in the entire 21st century: sell three million albums in a single calendar year. One record. Twelve months. Three million copies. That number alone demands a question: how does a young woman from south London, who once posted a three-song demo on Myspace to share with a friend, end up reshaping an entire music industry? The answers are stranger and more human than the statistics suggest. She has voiced heartbreak so specifically that strangers in other languages have recognised it. She has cancelled tours to stay with boyfriends, sobbed before the biggest performance of her life, and spoken openly about drinking too much, postpartum depression, and paying enormous tax bills. The arc from Tottenham to 120 million records sold worldwide runs through a school in Croydon, a viral moment on Saturday Night Live, a polyp removed from her vocal cords in Boston, and an alter ego borrowed from Beyoncé.

• 2. A South London Education

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  West Norwood, in south London, is the setting of Adele's first ever song, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16. She and her mother had arrived there after a period in Brighton, having relocated there in 1997 when Adele was 9, then returned to London through Brixton before settling in that south London district. Her father, Marc Evans, a Welshman, had left the family when Adele was 2. Her mother Penny, who supported them as a furniture maker and an adult-learning activities organiser, raised her alone. Adele spent stretches of her youth in Brockwell Park, playing guitar and singing for friends - an experience she later revisited in her 2015 song "Million Years Ago", recalling that she literally burst into tears driving past it that year. Music came early: she began singing at 4, and she has described becoming obsessed with voices as a child. At 11, her bedroom was, by her own account, essentially a Spice Girls shrine. By 14, she had stumbled onto Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald in the jazz section of a music shop, and spent the following weeks listening to James every night for an hour. She has credited Amy Winehouse's 2003 album Frank with inspiring her to pick up the guitar at all. In May 2006, she graduated from the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, a classmate of both Leona Lewis and Jessie J. The school, she has said, nurtured her talent even though at the time she had her eye on working in artists and repertoire rather than performing herself.

• 3. The Myspace Demo and XL Recordings

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  Four months after leaving the BRIT School, a friend posted Adele's three-song class project demo on Myspace, and it drew enough attention to prompt a phone call from Richard Russell, the director of XL Recordings. Adele doubted the offer was real and brought a friend with her to the meeting. Nick Huggett at XL referred her to manager Jonathan Dickins at September Management, and by June 2006 Dickins had become her official representative. A draw for Adele was that September was managing Jamie T, a British singer-songwriter she admired. Huggett formally signed her to XL in September 2006. Her first credited release was a single under the obscure Stirfried Trax label, a track described as "electronic club-ready" that is now largely forgotten. She also published two songs on the online arts publication PlatformsMagazine.com in 2006. Her television debut came in June 2007, when she performed "Daydreamer" on the BBC's Later... with Jools Holland. That October, her solo debut single "Hometown Glory" was pressed in a run of just 500 copies on Jamie T's Pacemaker Recordings label. In a BBC poll of music critics for the Sound of 2008, she was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of the year. The album 19, named for the age at which she wrote many of its songs, entered the British charts at number one. When it reached the United States that June, Billboard described her as having "potential to become among the most respected and inspiring international artists of her generation".

• 4. Saturday Night Live and the American Breakthrough

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  By mid-October 2008, Adele's attempt to establish herself in the United States appeared to have stalled. Then, on the 18th of October, she appeared as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live on NBC. The episode happened to coincide with an expected appearance by then US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and it drew the programme's best ratings in 14 years, with 17 million viewers watching. Adele performed "Chasing Pavements" and "Cold Shoulder". The day after the broadcast, 19 topped the iTunes charts and ranked at number five on Amazon.com, while "Chasing Pavements" climbed into the top 25. The album jumped 35 places on the Billboard 200, reaching number 11. It was certified gold in early 2009 by the RIAA. At the 51st Annual Grammy Awards in February 2009, she won Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Chasing Pavements", performing the song in a duet with Jennifer Nettles. The victory was shadowed by personal turbulence: Adele later said she had cancelled US tour dates to remain with a former boyfriend, that she had been "drinking far too much", and referred to that period as her "early life crisis". She moved to Notting Hill in November 2008, leaving her mother's house, a step she said prompted her to give up drinking.

• 5. The Phenomenon of 21

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  Adele released 21 on the 24th of January 2011 in the UK and the 22nd of February in the US. The album had been shaped partly by her bus driver playing contemporary Nashville music during her 2008-09 tour of the American South, which drew her toward country and roots sounds. She told Spin Magazine it was "really exciting for me because I never grew up around" that music. She has also described the album as inspired by a breakup with a former partner. To cope with stage anxiety, she told Rolling Stone she had created the alter ego "Sasha Carter", a name derived from Beyoncé's "Sasha Fierce" and June Carter. 21 topped charts in 30 countries. At the 31st Brit Awards on the 15th of February 2011, her performance of "Someone like You" propelled it to number one in the UK. She became the first living artist since the Beatles in 1964 to place two top-five entries simultaneously on the UK Singles Chart and the UK Albums Chart. By December 2011, the album had sold over 3.4 million copies in the UK, overtaking Amy Winehouse's Back to Black to become the biggest-selling album of the 21st century in the country. In October 2011, a vocal-cord hemorrhage forced her to cancel two tours. That November, Steven M. Zeitels, director of the Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, performed laser microsurgery to remove a benign polyp. Rolling Stone later reported that after the surgery her voice had become "palpably bigger and purer-toned" and that she had added four notes to the top of her range. At the 2012 Grammy Awards, she won in all six categories for which she was nominated. On the 9th of December 2011, Billboard had named her Artist of the Year, and 21 both its album and song of the year for "Rolling in the Deep", making her the first woman ever to top all three categories in the same year. The album has since sold over 31 million copies worldwide.

• 6. Skyfall and the Bond Record

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  In October 2012, Adele confirmed she had been writing the theme song for Skyfall, the twenty-third James Bond film. The song was written and composed with producer Paul Epworth and recorded at Abbey Road Studios, featuring orchestrations by J. A. C. Redford. Adele called the recording "one of the proudest moments of my life." On the 14th of October 2012, "Skyfall" entered the UK Singles Chart at number 2, with sales of 92,000 copies that week bringing its total to 176,000. In the US, it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 8, selling 261,000 copies in its first three days. That chart position tied it with Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill" as the highest-charting James Bond theme in UK chart history - a record later surpassed in 2015 by Sam Smith's "Writing's on the Wall". The song earned Adele the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and the Academy Award for Best Original Song. It was the first James Bond theme to win the Oscar, and the fifth to be nominated, following "The Look of Love" in 1967, "Live and Let Die" in 1973, "Nobody Does It Better" in 1977, and "For Your Eyes Only" in 1981. In January 2014, "Skyfall" brought her Grammy total to ten, winning Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.

• 7. 25 and the Record Sales

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  On the eve of her 26th birthday in May 2014, Adele posted a message on Twitter that media outlets interpreted as a signal about her next album. The comment - "Bye bye 25... See you again later in the year" - fuelled speculation for more than a year. On the 23rd of October 2015, the lead single "Hello" received its first broadcast on Nick Grimshaw's Radio 1 Breakfast Show. Its video, released the same day, was viewed over 27.7 million times on YouTube in its first 24 hours, breaking the existing Vevo record held by Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" at 20.1 million. "Hello" reached one billion YouTube views after just 88 days, the fastest any video had done so. On the 2nd of November, it became the first song in US history to sell at least one million downloads in a single week, setting the record at 1.11 million. 25, released on the 20th of November 2015, sold over 800,000 copies in its first week in the UK, becoming the fastest-selling album in UK chart history. In the US, it moved 3.38 million copies in its opening week, the largest single-week album sales figure since Nielsen began tracking in 1991. It became the best-selling album worldwide of 2015 with 17.4 million copies sold, and has since sold 20 million globally. At the 36th Brit Awards in February 2016, Adele took home four awards including British Album of the Year for 25 and British Single of the Year for "Hello", pushing her total Brit wins to eight. Her Adele Live 2016 world tour took her to Glastonbury, where she performed a 90-minute, 15-song set on the 25th of June in front of 150,000 people. She described it as "by far, the best moment of my life so far", though presenter Jo Whiley recalled that Adele had been in tears half an hour before walking on stage.

• 8. 30 and the Las Vegas Residency

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  30 was released on the 19th of November 2021. In the UK, it debuted with 261,000 copies sold in its first week, the largest opening since Ed Sheeran's Divide in 2017, and it became the best-selling album of 2021 in the country. It reached number one in 24 territories worldwide and topped the Global Album All-Format Chart, the Global Album Sales Chart, and the newly created Global Vinyl Album Chart. It was the first Adele album to be marketed globally by Columbia Records rather than split between XL Recordings and regional partners. On the 8th of February 2022-30 won British Album of the Year at the 42nd Brit Awards, making Adele the first solo artist in history to win that honour three times. Her Weekends with Adele residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, postponed in January 2022 due to delivery delays and the COVID-19 pandemic, eventually ran across 34 shows and was extended twice more. On the 25th of March, she announced a further 34 shows, wanting to record a film so that "anyone who wants to see the show can see it". A final extension, labelled "The Final Shows", added 32 more dates starting in January 2024 and concluding in June. In August 2024, she performed ten shows at a custom-built 80,000-capacity venue in Munich, where more than three million people reportedly queued for presale tickets at peak time. During her Munich performance on the 9th of August 2024, she revealed her engagement to American sports agent Rich Paul. In July 2024, Adele announced she would be taking an indefinite break from music after the residency ended, with no plans for a new album.