Adele: How She Became the Biggest Vocalist in the World

"It took off and gained its own momentum – our grandmothers could have sold those records! Her appeal to people was just so personal and, for that reason, not plannable.”
That’s Beggars Group mainman Martin Mills reflecting on the 30 million-plus copies of Adele’s 21 that are residing in people’s record collections, a cash-register pleasing tally that matches the likes of Elvis, Madonna, The Beatles, The Eagles and Led Zep in their commercial prime.
Despite his omnipresence on the global airwaves and stadium-filling capabilities, neither Ed Sheeran album has broken through the ten million barrier yet, while Hozier’s self- titled debut is hovering around the 1.5 million mark. Simply put, nobody these days sells physical records in the quantities that Adele Laurie Blue Adkins MBE – yep, the Queen of England’s a fan too – does.
You could almost hear the collective cheering from the music retail industry last month when after numerous, well-publicised delays it was confirmed that Adele’s 25 will be dropping on November 20 – the same day that Enya and Gavin James are releasing their latest potentially Irish chart-topping collections.
Adele was in the studio as flagship single ‘Hello’ received its world premiere on Nick Grimshaw’s BBC Radio One breakfast show.
The song is what you’ve come to expect from Ms. Adkins – lung-bursting swooping vocals, everything including the kitchen sink production and a chorus you’ll be humming till Christmas.
“Hello from the other side/ I must have called a thousand times/ To tell you I’m sorry for everything that I’ve done,” she says to a former and far away lover.
“I’m feeling a little bit overwhelmed but I’m really, really excited and relieved because I’ve been sitting on this for a while,” she told Grimshaw. “Getting into the head space to write a record I found really difficult because now I’m a parent. It was such a break off that I fell out of the habit of writing songs.”
Hot Press’ first encounter with Adele was in January 2008. The release of her 19 debut as a week away and much was being made of her having attended the same BRIT School as Kate Nash, Leona Lewis, Katie Melua, assorted members of The Kooks, Morcheeba and The Feeling and Amy Winehouse.
“People think that all you have to do is enrol and, hey presto, you’re famous, but of the 1,000 who graduate every year you’re lucky if half-a-dozen get a career out of it,” she ventured. “The plusses for me were unlimited free rehearsal time, and discovering by being in one for a few months that band democracy’s not for me. I decide which songs we’re going to do!”
Asked whether they’d received any instruction re: what to do if your husband’s in jail charged with perverting the course of justice, and you’ve been spotted at five in the morning walking around in your bra – both fates had just befallen Amy – she sighed and said: “None of the teachers have ever been in the spotlight, so what the fuck do they know? If you’re asking me today whether I’m in control of my life, I’ll say, ‘Yeah, completely’, but that probably would’ve been Amy’s answer to that question two years ago. I hope that it’s always about the music rather than me being out in my undies, but you don’t know how fame’s going to affect you until you’re famous. I do find it disgusting the way everybody’s feeding off her problems.”
Comparisons with Winehouse were made even more inevitable by the fact that 19 was produced in part by Back To Black man Mark Ronson.
“Working with him is lovely ‘cause he’s so calm and supportive,” she enthused. “I met Mark the day his record, Version, came out in the UK and we hit it off straight away.”
Talking about her musical upbringing in Brixton, a melting pot if ever there was one, she said: “We used to have sing-offs in the playground to Destiny’s Child and stuff like that. I went through lots of different phases – I was a grunger, a rude girl, a skater and a nu-metaller. I pretended to like those sorts of music ‘cause the clothes were cool, but when I was at home on my own it was the Spice Girls and Ella Fitzgerald.”
It was evident from the first batch of overwhelmingly positive 19 reviews that Adele is one of those rare acts who appeals to both Indie Schmindie Weekly and Geriatric Rock Monthly readers.
“There are nice tunes and proper singing for parents and stroppy ‘fuck off!’ lyrics for their kids,” she laughed. “I was really worried doing my first tour that the audience would be a particular type, but it was 14 to 60-year-olds, every nationality, gay, straight, lesbian, bi. People seem to be deciding for themselves what I am, which is brilliant.”
Whilst there’s never been a pop Svengali pulling the strings, Adele has benefitted from meeting the right industry people at the right time.
“Adele came to us through Jack Peñate,” Martin Mills explains. “We signed him and he said, ‘I know this girl who’s doing some great stuff ’ so we brought her in.”
Beggars later had the foresight to team her up with Paul Epworth who co-wrote and produced sizeable chunks of 21, including the single that effectively changed Adele’s life: ‘Rolling In The Deep’.
“He’s a nice guy who’s certainly played a major part in her success but there was no manufacturing process,” Mills insists.
Despite elements of the media almost willing her to become another celebrity car crash - there are 113 million Google search results for “Adele, weight” - she's managed to keep her Jimmy Choos firmly on the ground.
“She’s succeeded in keeping it mostly about the music, which helps,” Martin Mills reflects. “She doesn’t turn up at the opening of an envelope or present herself in an overtly sexual way, so there’s not a whole lot for the tabloids to feed on. You’re obviously going to get recognised and be a story when you’ve sold 30 million albums but there are steps you can take to minimise the intrusion.”
Catching up again with Hot Press in March 2008, Adele acknowledged the importance of winning the Brits Critics’ Choice Award just as 19 was coming out.
“When I found out in December, I hadn’t even heard of the award,” she smiled. “I’d just done Friday Night With Jonathan Ross as well, and I was like, ‘Whatever’. I didn’t really care. Also, it seemed a bit silly to get it at the beginning, cos I hadn’t even released ‘Chasing Pavements’. It got a lot of hype, which was annoying at the time. But when I look back on it, it achieved what it was meant to do, which was to push the winner into the spotlight.
“If I hadn’t have won it, I don’t think I would have had a number one record or anything, so it was amazing. And when I picked it up, it felt alright, ’cos the album and single had done well. But we just got really, really drunk. We got there at like 11am, and everyone else was drunk already. It was fun. It was also a bit weird, like being on tables near Girls Aloud, who I’m a huge fan of. I was kind of going, ‘Oh my God’. I was too embarrassed to say hello.”
Seriously hot property or not, Adele’s parting line that day to Paul Nolan was a self-depricating, “I don’t look like a star, do I?”
Hot Press’ 21 review was penned by Ed Power who whilst enamoured of her “ball-shrivelling bite” and ability to “rip it up and rock it out when required” had no idea it was going to sell 26 million copies more than its predecessor. None of us did.
By the time Adele and Hot Press crossed paths again in August 2011, she was one of the most famous women on the planet.
“I knew from when I was still promoting my first album that I definitely wanted to progress a bit with my second record,” she revealed. “I knew I wanted to go down a bit more of a bluesier gospel kind of route. And be a bit more kind of playful and cheeky and sarcastic. But I didn’t wanna stray too far, obviously, because my fans enjoyed ‘Chasing Pavements’ and ‘Hometown Glory’ and songs like that so much off of the first record.”
With an estimated £6 million in the bank at the time - the Sunday Times now values her at £45 million - Adele had been enthusiastically splashing the cash.
I bought my mum a car, and a big flat for me and my mum to both live in together,” she chirped. “And it’s big enough for us to not be at home – even though we are at home together, you know. So you can’t really tell. And I also got my nana’s garden done up for her. It hasn’t been done up since my grandfather died. And so I got the garden redesigned for her and spruced up the rosebush.”
There was no Thom Yorke-esque moaning about the downside of megastardom - and all that lovely lucre! - with Adele noting that, “I don’t get hassled in England, really, unless I go out in full make-up with eyelashes and hair up and everything and dressed up. But if I don’t have any make-up on and I wear my hair just pulled back, I don’t get hassled. In America a lot more people recognise me. I don’t know why, but they do.”
What Ms. Adkins didn’t tell us is that having been serially unlucky in love - 19 and 21 are basically ‘Dear Diary...’ ruminations on bastard ex-boyfriends - she’d met an old Etonian Simon Konecki with whom in October 2012 she had her first child, Angelo.
Cooing about her son in the current issue of Rolling Stone, Adele says: “He’s a little angel. All the things I really like about myself, he brings out in me, and he’s the only person that tells me no. He completely rules me. He’s the boss of me, and it’s so funny for other people to watch, because I’m the boss of everything in my work life.”
While motherhood has curtailed her bar-hopping - “I used to be able to drink anyone under the table and still be able to put on an all-right show, but with kids, hangovers are torture. They just know. They pick up on it and just go for you” - it hasn’t blunted her notoriously sharp tongue.
Discussing an unfruitful 25 studio hook-up with Damon Albarn, Adele vents: “It ended up being one of those ‘don’t meet your idol’ moments. And the saddest thing was that I was such a big Blur fan growing up. But it was sad, and I regret hanging out with him.”
Thankfully, her time in the studio with Rick Rubin, Max Martin, Shellback, Greg Kurstin, Tobias Jesso Jr., Paul Epworth, Danger Mouse, Ryan Tedder, Bruno Mars and Sia proved to be eminently more profitable.
“I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved,” she says in her Rolling Stone interview. “And I wasn’t, before I had Angelo. I didn’t understand, actually, what I had achieved and how far I had come. Because everyone wants to do something with their life, and we don’t all get the opportunity because shit gets in the way. So I feel fucking so fortunate that the stars just aligned for me and allowed me to have the most ridiculous ride ever.”
Will 25 be as big a commercial success as 21? The stats suggest it will with ‘Hello’ accumulating 47.5m Spotify plays in a week and 27m Vevo views of the accompanying video in a day. Add in over a million paid downloads and it’s no wonder the bookies have suspended bets on who’ll have the Christmas number one album.