Coming of age

With the old one looking decidedly frayed around the edges, it’s no surprise that 2008 has started with a frantic scramble to unearth the new Amy Winehouse.

While Duffy, Gabriella Cilmi and Sharon Jones all go some way towards fitting the bill, the one you’d bet your granny’s life savings on emulating Mrs. Fielder-Civil’s multi-platinum success is 19-year-old Adele Adkins.
Not only do they share influences (Ella Fitzgerald and Etta James) and an alma mater (Croydon’s Brit School for the Performing Arts), but they’re also part of that rare breed of acts who are as likely to be fawned over by Indie Schmindie Weekly as they are Geriatric Rock Monthly.
“Yeah, there are nice tunes and proper singing for parents and stroppy ‘fuck off!’ lyrics for their kids,” Adele says jokingly, but actually hitting the nail right on the proverbial. Like Back To Black before it, Adele’s debut album – autobiographically titled 19 – offsets its retro musical footprint with lyrics that couldn’t come from any decade other than this one.
They’re real life stories too, with the collection’s standout, ‘Daydreamer’, detailing how she had the dirty done on her by a bisexual boyfriend.
“It’s double the competition, which being the jealous type did me nut in,” she laughs. “It was written somewhere that we went out for years, but that wasn’t the case. He was one of my long-time best friends who, I dunno why, I fell in love with a bit on my 18th birthday. We were together as a couple for two months, and then I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I don’t have the mental or physical equipment to go out with someone who’s bisexual.”
Has the young gentleman in question been warned that his love rat-ery is about to enter the public domain?
“Not officially! I imagine he’s got the gist from reading my press, but I’m not bitter about it or anything. I’ve written an album about my life to date, and he’s a major part of it.”
Adele’s ‘next big thing’ status was assured last November when, with only a 500-copy limited-edition single to her name, she was invited on to Later... with Jools Holland.
“The record company said ‘It’s too early, it’s too early’, but how can you turn down appearing on the same show as Paul McCartney – sorry, Sir Paul McCartney – and Bjork? That line-up’s never going to happen again, so I put my foot down!”
Was the Later... experience all she’d hoped it would be?
“And the rest,” she enthuses. “I bottled going up to Sir Paul and saying ‘Hello!’ but he pulled me aside and said he really enjoyed it and that he’s looking forward to hearing about me in the future. I got two kisses as well, so I was well pleased!
“Bjork was a bit, er, moody but when you’re as genius as she is you’re allowed to be.”
Jools well and truly wooed, it was on to Jonathan Ross.
“That was a really surreal night,” she reveals. “All my team were going, ‘Jerry Seinfeld – oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!’ and I didn’t have a clue who he was. I was sat on the sofa next to Renee Zellweger, who’s properly famous, thinking, ‘How did I get here?’ I actually felt really overwhelmed.”
Born in Tottenham, Adele moved aged 10 to Brixton where the melting pot environment introduced her to R’n’B, both classic and new.
“We used to have sing-offs in the playground to Destiny’s Child and stuff like that. I went through loads 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 I listened to.”
Returning to our earlier point, is Adele surprised that her stock’s as high with noodly chin-strokers as it is the haircut brigade?
“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.”
Having grown up wanting to be either a heart surgeon or a fashion journalist, Adele quit her local comprehensive in her mid-teens and bagged a place at the Brit School where, in addition to Amy, Kate Nash, Leona Lewis, Lynden David Hall, Katie Melua and assorted members of The Kooks, Morcheeba and The Feeling learned their chops.
“People think that all you have to do is enroll and, hey presto, you’re famous but of the 1,000 who graduate every year you’re lucky if half-a-dozen get a proper career out of it,” she reflects. “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!”
Did they receive 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?
“None of the teachers have ever been in the spotlight, so what the fuck do they know?” she reasons. “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 though the way everybody’s feeding off her problems.”
Comparisons with Winehouse are made even more inevitable by the fact that 19 is part-produced by Back To Black man Mark Ronson.
“Working with him is lovely ‘cause he’s so calm and supportive,” Adele coos. “I met Mark the day his record, Version, came out in the UK and we hit it off straight away. We’re currently working on a remix of my song ‘Cold Shoulder’ that Wale’s going to put a bit of a rap on, and a surprise for the BRIT Awards in February, which I’m under pain of death not to talk about but is going to be brilliant!”
Is she a connoisseur of club culture?
“I love upbeat music. In fact, the reason my own stuff’s so slow is that I’m always chavved from being out the night before dancing! My favourite London club’s a little one called St. Moritz, which plays bashment, dancehall, hip-hop, Wham… It’s starts off all cred and by the end of the night everyone’s dancing round their handbags. I love it.”
Chav dancing to ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ will have to be put on the back burner this year as Adele switches into promo overdrive.
“Famous last words, but I don’t feel any pressure or that it’s over-hyped,” she concludes. “The plan is to mainly spend 2008 here, and then next year go and live in Brooklyn so I can have a crack at America. People go on about it being a really tough job, but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”