Adele
Adele is a multi Grammy Award winning English singer-songwriter who first gained prominence with the release of her 2007 breakthrough song titled “Hometown Glory”. She went on to gain worldwide stardom with her debut album titled 19 in 2008.
She is an artist who, within the timespan of about 10 years, sold 120,000,000 records and established herself as one of the top-selling music artists in history. The accolades she has achieved in the process are way too numerous to all be mentioned here. But in terms of the UK, in the very least, it’s safe to say her emergence was the greatest musical discovery of the 2010s.
Or stated differently, she’s one of those artists whose success is more attributable to her undeniable talent than her marketing team. And Adele has earned the trophies to prove it. For instance, she won an Ivor Novello Award in 2012 and another in 2016. In 2012 she took home six Grammys, which itself ties the record for most Grammys earned in a single year. And the least-successful of her first-three albums, “19″ (2008), went triple-platinum in the US, octuple-platinum in the UK and sold nearly 7,000,000 copies worldwide.
After dropping her third studio album, “25″ (2015) – which itself sold 22,000,000 copies – it seemed Adele, who has long been known as reclusive, took somewhat of a break from the public spotlight. However, she did announce in early 2020 that a fourth studio album was forthcoming.
Adele was born on May 5th, 1988 in London to Marc Evans and Penny Adkins. On October 19, 2012, Adele became a mother for the first time after she and her partner Simon Konecki welcomed a son named Angelo James Konecki.
Interesting Facts about “Adele”
Her real name is Adele Laurie Blue Adkins and she was born in Tottenham, London, England to Penny Adkins and Marc Evans.
Adele’s father abandoned his family when Adele was only two years old, leaving her mother Penny to raise her all by herself.
According to Adele, growing up, she spent more time singing rather than with her books.
Adele and singers Jessie J and Leona Lewis were classmates at the famous London performing arts school the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology.
Hometown Glory, which was Adele’s first record, which she wrote when she was only 16 years old.
She hates flying.
Until 2015, Adele was a heavy smoker. According to her, she quit smoking because she believed it would lead to her early death.
The late British singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse inspired Adele to play the guitar. According to Adele, had it not been for Amy and her 2003 album titled Frank, she would have not “picked up a guitar”.
Adele considers the British girl group the Spice Girls as her biggest influence musically. According to her, the Spice Girls made her what she is today. Her other musical influences include Celine Dion, The Cure, Annie Lennox and Etta James.
She thought herself how to sing by listening to Roberta Flack, Ella Fitzegerald and Etta James.
Adele is a staunch supporter of the British of the center-left political party in the UK the Labor Party.
She is an outspoken supporter of the LGBT community and is considered as an icon for that community.
On June 12 2016, shortly after terrorist Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people at an Orlando, Florida gay nightclub called Pulse, Adele, who was performing at a show in Antwerp, Belgium, was so downcast by the event that she dedicated the entire show to the victims of the mass shooting.
Adele is a bona fide feminist.
She loves tattoos and has multiple tattoos all over her body, including a tattoo of the letter “A” behind her right ear, which is a tribute to her son Angelo. Furthermore, she also has a tattoo of Angelo’s name on her right hand.
All Adele’s albums have numbers as their titles. The numbers represent how old she was when she made the albums. So for example, her third studio album titled 25 tells us that she was 25 years old when the album was made.
Adele and Konecki sued a photo agency for damages after the company published photos of their son Angelo without their permission. The couple won the case and was awarded damages in July 2014.
In 2012, Adele was placed at the number five position on VH1’s list of the 100 Greatest Women in Music.
2012 saw her being included in Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2016, she was included in that prestigious list once again.
In June 2013, she was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her outstanding services to music. The prestigious award was given to her personally by Prince Charles at the Buckingham Palace in December that same year.
Adele won her first Grammy Award in 2009 when she won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. In 2017, during the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, she made Grammy history by becoming the first artist to win the “Big three” in one night twice. The “big three” refers to Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Record of the Year. As of 2017, she has won a total of 15 Grammy Awards out of 18 nominations.
She won her first Golden Globe Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards in 2013 when her song Skyfall received the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.
Between May 2011 and May 2012, she earned approximately £23 million and was placed at the number six position on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s highest paid celebrities below the age of 30. That same year, she occupied the number one spot on the Sunday Times Rich List of musicians in the United Kingdom below the age of 30.
Adele is one of the most successful musicians of all time, having sold over a hundred million albums worldwide.
She has entered into the Guinness World Records several times. For example, in 2016, the music video for her hit single Hello entered into the Guinness World Records as the video that took the shortest time to hit one billion views on YouTube, having taken just 88 days to achieve that feat!
In 2014, legendary British singer and songwriter Phil Collins called Adele a “slippery little fish” in annoyance after she refused working with him on a song for her third studio album 25 despite initially asking him to write a song with her for the album. According to Collins, Adele initially asked him if he would write a song with her. She then gave him a piece of music to complete but then he never heard from her again.
In February 2017, she faced a major backlash on social media after giving a speech at the at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in which she said singer Beyonce’s album Lemonade inspired her “black friends” and made them feel empowered. Despite her comments meaning no harm, many accused her of racism for separating people based on their race.
Top Adele Songs
“Hello“
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[…] is a multiple Grammy Award winning song by British singer Adele. The lyrics of the song, which are conversational in nature, touch on a number of themes, most […]