Adele Laurie Blue Adkins ( ; born 5 May 1988) is an English singer and songwriter. Regarded as a British cultural icon, she is known for her mezzo-soprano vocals and sentimental songwriting. Her accolades include 16 Grammy Awards, 12 Brit Awards (including three for British Album of the Year), an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award.
After graduating from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a record deal with XL Recordings. Her debut album, 19 (2008), included the UK top-five singles "Chasing Pavements" and "Make You Feel My Love", becoming one of best-selling debut albums ever in the UK. She received the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Her second studio album, 21 (2011), became the best-selling album of the 21st century. 21 holds the record for the top-performing album in US chart history, topping the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks, with the singles "Rolling in the Deep", "Someone like You", and "Set Fire to the Rain" heading charts worldwide and becoming her signature songs. The album received a record-tying six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year.
In 2013, Adele won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the James Bond film soundtrack single "Skyfall". Her third studio album, 25 (2015), broke first-week sales records in both the UK and US. In the US, it became the first album to sell over three million copies in a week. 25 earned her five Grammy Awards, including the Album of the Year. Its lead single, "Hello", achieved worldwide success. Her fourth studio album, 30 (2021), was led by the single "Easy on Me", which won her a Grammy Award. 25 and 30 became the best-selling albums worldwide in 2015 and 2021, respectively.
Adele is one of the world's best-selling music artists, with sales of over 120 million records worldwide. The best-selling female artist of the 21st century in the UK, she was named the best-selling artist of the 2010s in the US. Her studio albums 21 and 25 were the top two best-selling albums of the 2010s in the UK and both are listed among the best-selling albums in UK chart history, while in the US both are certified Diamond, the most of any artist who debuted in the 21st century. all of her studio albums, except 19, have topped the yearly best-selling albums chart worldwide in the 21st century.
Early life and education Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on 5 May 1988 in Tottenham, London, to an English mother, Penny Adkins, and a Welsh father, Marc Evans. After Evans left when Adele was 2 years old, she was brought up by her mother. She began singing at age 4 and asserts that she became obsessed with voices. In 1997, 9-year-old Adele and her mother, who by then had found work as a furniture maker and an adult-learning activities organiser, relocated to Brighton on the south coast of England.
In 1999, Adele and her mother moved back to London; first to Brixton, then to the neighbouring district of West Norwood in south London, which is the subject of her first song "Hometown Glory". Adele spent much of her youth in Brockwell Park where she would play the guitar and sing to friends, which she recalled in her 2015 song "Million Years Ago". She stated, "It has quite monumental moments of my life that I've spent there, and I drove past it [in 2015] and I just literally burst into tears. I really missed it." Adele graduated from the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon in May 2006, where she was a classmate of Leona Lewis and Jessie J.Collis, Clark (19 December 2008), "Spotlight on... Adele." Entertainment Weekly. (1026):62. Adele credits the school with nurturing her talent even though, at the time, she was more interested in going into artists and repertoire (A&R) and hoped to launch other people's careers.
Career 2006–2010: Career beginnings and 19
In 2006, the then 17-year-old was billed as a featured vocalist on a single called "Be Divine" by a techno DJ named Ricsta. The song was issued under the now-defunct Stirfried Trax label and was the first under Adele's name. Described by Hugh McIntyre from Bustle as an "electronic club-ready" track, the song never charted and received little attention.
Four months after graduating from the BRIT school, Adele continued writing music. She published two songs in the fourth issue of the online arts publication PlatformsMagazine.com. She recorded a three-song demo for a class project and gave it to a friend. The friend then posted the demo on Myspace, and the song became a hit. Richard Russell, director of the music label XL Recordings, took notice of the song and called Adele. She doubted if the offer was real and took a friend with her to the meeting. Nick Huggett, an executive at XL, took notice of Adele's talent and referred her to Jonathan Dickins of September Management. At the time, September was managing Jamie T, and Adele, a fan of the British singer-songwriter, decided to sign with Dickins. In June 2006, Dickins became Adele's official manager. In September 2006, Adele signed with XL Recordings.
Adele provided vocals for Jack Peñate's song, "My Yvonne", for his debut album. It was during this session she first met producer Jim Abbiss, who would go on to produce both the majority of her debut album, 19, and tracks on 21. In June 2007, Adele made her television debut, performing "Daydreamer" on the BBC's Later... with Jools Holland. Adele's solo debut, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16, was released in October 2007 on Jamie T's label Pacemaker Recordings. Only five hundred records were pressed. Following its showcase on an episode of the British television show Skins, the song entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 32. It peaked at No. 19 on 27 July 2008, following its physical release. Later, the song would be rereleased on Adele's first album and, in 2010, was nominated for a Grammy.
By the end of 2008, Adele's fame had grown rapidly. She became the first recipient of the Brit Awards Critics' Choice and was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2008 in an annual poll of music critics, BBC's Sound of 2008. She released her second single, "Chasing Pavements", on 14 January 2008, two weeks ahead of her debut album. The song reached number two on the UK Chart, and stayed there for four weeks. The album 19, named for her age at the time she wrote and composed many of its songs, entered the British charts at number one. The Times Encyclopedia of Modern Music named 19 an "essential" blue-eyed soul recording. Adele was nominated for a 2008 Mercury Prize award for 19. She also won an Urban Music Award for "Best Jazz Act", and a Music of Black Origin (MOBO) nomination in the category of Best UK Female. In March 2008, Adele signed a deal with Columbia Records and XL Recordings for her foray into the United States. She embarked on a short North American tour in the same month, and 19 was released in the US in June. Billboard magazine stated: "Adele truly has potential to become among the most respected and inspiring international artists of her generation." The An Evening with Adele world tour began in May 2008 and ended in June 2009.
Despite Adele's strong success in the UK, she struggled to break into North America. Adele cancelled the US tour dates of her 2008 tour to be with a former boyfriend. She said in Nylon magazine in June 2009, "I'm like, 'I can't believe I did that.' It seems so ungrateful...I was drinking far too much and that was kind of the basis of my relationship with this boy. I couldn't bear to be without him, so I was like, 'Well, I'll just cancel my stuff then.'"Shapiro, Marc (2012). "Adele: The Biography". p. 88. Macmillan. She referred to this period as her "early life crisis". Already possessing a dislike for flying, Adele experienced severe bouts of homesickness while away from London.
On 18 October 2008, Adele was featured as the musical guest in an episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL). The episode, which included a planned appearance by then-US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, earned the program 17 million viewers. Adele performed "Chasing Pavements" and "Cold Shoulder",. The episode gave SNL its highest ratings in fourteen years, and Adele became an overnight sensation. Former SNL cast member Bill Hader later stated, "I remember us sitting at the rewrite table on [floor] 9, and Adele — not a lot of us had heard of her — she started singing. And it was like we all stopped. We opened the curtain and everybody looked down and went, 'Who is that?'"
The morning after the episode aired, 19 topped the iTunes charts and ranked number five on Amazon's charts while "Chasing Pavements" rose into the top 25. The album reached number 11 on the Billboard 200 as a result, a jump of 35 places over the previous week. In November 2008, Adele moved to Notting Hill, leaving her mother's house and quitting drinking. The album was certified gold in early 2009, by the RIAA. By July 2009, the album had sold 2.2 million copies worldwide.
At the 51st Annual Grammy Awards in February 2009, Adele won the award for Best New Artist, in addition to the award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Chasing Pavements", which was also nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Adele performed "Chasing Pavements" at the ceremony in a duet with Jennifer Nettles. In 2010, Adele received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Hometown Glory". In April her song "My Same" entered the German Singles Chart after it had been performed by Lena Meyer-Landrut in the talent show contest Unser Star für Oslo, or Our Star for Oslo, in which the German entry to the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 was determined. In late September, after being featured on The X Factor, Adele's version of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love" re-entered the UK singles chart at number 4. During the 2010 CMT Artists of the Year special, Adele performed a widely publicised duet of Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" with Darius Rucker. This performance was later nominated for a CMT Music Award.
2011–2014: Worldwide recognition with 21
Adele released her second studio album, 21, on 24 January 2011 in the UK and 22 February in the US. She said the album was inspired by the break-up with her former partner. The album's sound is described as classic and contemporary country and roots music. The change in sound from her debut album was the result of her bus driver playing contemporary music from Nashville when she was touring the American South, and the title reflected the growth she had experienced in the prior two years. Adele told Spin Magazine: "It was really exciting for me because I never grew up around [that music]." 21 topped the charts in 30 countries, including the UK and the US.
In a 2011 Rolling Stone cover story, Adele said she dealt with onstage anxiety by creating the alter ego "Sasha Carter", derived from Beyoncé's "Sasha Fierce" persona and the American country singer June Carter. Before meeting Beyoncé, Adele described experiencing an intense anxiety attack. In response, she asked herself, "What would Sasha Fierce do?" and that helped immensely.