Adele Laurie Blue Adkins MBE (/əˈdɛl/; born 5 May 1988) is an English singer and songwriter. After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a record deal with XL Recordings. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 and spawned the UK top-five singles “Chasing Pavements” and “Make You Feel My Love”. The album was certified 8× platinum in the UK and triple platinum in the US. Adele was honoured with the Brit Award for Rising Star as well as the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
Early life and education
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on 5 May 1988 in the Tottenham district of London, to an English mother, Penny Adkins, and a Welsh father, Marc Evans. Evans left when Adele was 2, and 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, she 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”.
Career
2006–2010: Career beginnings and 19
Adele performing on an acoustic guitar in Kilburn, London, in 2007
Four months after graduation, Adele published two songs on the fourth issue of the online arts publication PlatformsMagazine.com. She had recorded a three-song demo for a class project and given it to a friend. The friend posted the demo on Myspace, where it became very successful and led to a phone call from Richard Russell, boss of the music label XL Recordings. She doubted if the offer was real because the only record company she knew was Virgin Records, and she took a friend with her to the meeting. Around this time, Adele collaborated with Ricsta on “Be Divine”, a song described as an “electronic club-ready” track.
Nick Huggett, at XL, recommended Adele to manager Jonathan Dickins at September Management, and in June 2006, Dickins became her official representative. September was managing Jamie T at the time and this proved a major draw for Adele, a big fan of the British singer-songwriter. Huggett then signed Adele to XL in September 2006. Adele provided vocals for Jack Peñate’s song, “My Yvonne,” for his debut album, and 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 breakthrough song, “Hometown Glory”, written when she was 16, was released in October 2007. By 2008, Adele had become the headliner and performed an acoustic set, in which she was supported by Damien Rice. 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 BBC poll of music critics, 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 of it: “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.
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.
Accolades and achievements
Adele’s concert on 28 June had 98,000 attendees, a stadium record for a UK music event.
Adele has sold more than 120 million records worldwide, making her one of the world’s best-selling music artists. She is one of the artists who bring the most revenue to the music industry per day. In May 2011, “Team Adele” was ranked number one on The Guardian’s “Music Power 100” list: “the 100 most influential people in the music industry”. In February 2012, Adele was listed at number five on VH1’s 100 Greatest Women in Music. In April 2012, Time magazine named Adele one of the 100 most influential people in the world. People named her one of 2012 Most Beautiful at Every Age. On 30 April 2012, a tribute to Adele was held at New York City’s (Le) Poisson Rouge called Broadway Sings Adele, starring various Broadway actors such as Matt Doyle.
In the week ending 3 March 2012, Adele became the first solo female artist to have three singles in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time with “Rolling in the Deep”, “Someone Like You”, and “Set Fire to the Rain” as well as the first female artist to have two albums in the top 5 of the Billboard 200 and two singles in the top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. Adele topped the 2012 Sunday Times Rich List of musicians in the UK under 30, and made the Top 10 of Billboard magazine’s “Top 40 Money Makers”. Billboard also announced the same day that Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” is the biggest crossover hit of the past 25 years, topping pop, adult pop and adult contemporary charts and that Adele is one of four female artists to have an album chart at number one for more than 13 weeks (the other three artists being Judy Garland, Carole King, and Whitney Houston).
At the 2012 Ivor Novello Awards in May, Adele was named Songwriter of the Year, and “Rolling in the Deep” won the award for Most Performed Work of 2011. At the 2012 BMI Awards held in London in October, Adele won Song of the Year (for “Rolling in the Deep”) in recognition of the song being the most played on US television and radio in 2011. In 2013, Adele won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the James Bond theme “Skyfall”. This is the first James Bond song to win and the fifth to be nominated—after “For Your Eyes Only” (1981), “Nobody Does It Better” (1977), “Live and Let Die” (1973), and “The Look of Love” (1967). “Skyfall” won the Brit Award for Best British Single at the 33rd Brit Awards.
In June 2013, Adele was appointed a MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to music, and she received the award from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace on 19 December 2013. In February 2013 she was named one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK by Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4.
Released in 2015, Adele’s third album, 25, became the year’s best-selling album and broke first week sales records in a number of markets, including the UK and the US. 25 was her second album to be certified diamond in the US and earned her five Grammy Awards, including her second Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and four Brit Awards, including her second Brit Award for British Album. Adele became the only artist in history to, on two separate occasions, win the three general categories Grammys in the same ceremony. With 15 awards from 18 nominations, Adele won more Grammys than any other female who was born outside the US. Adele’s seven weeks at the top of the UK Albums Chart took her total to 31 weeks at number one in the UK with her three albums, surpassing Madonna’s previous record of most weeks at number one for a female act in the UK. The lead single, “Hello”, became the first song in the US to sell over one million digital copies within a week of its release.
At the 2016 Ivor Novello Awards Adele was named Songwriter of the Year for the second time by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors. In April 2016 she appeared for the second time on the Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people. Adele was inducted into the Royal Albert Hall’s Walk of Fame in 2018, making her one of the first eleven recipients of a star on the walk. Despite releasing just two albums in the decade (21 and 25), at 36 weeks she had the second most weeks at number one in the UK Album Charts in the 2010s, five weeks behind Ed Sheeran (who released four albums). In December 2019, Israel’s largest TV and radio stations named her singer of the 2010s.
In 2021, Adele was named the UK’s best-selling female album artist of the 21st century, based on Official Charts Company data. In May 2022, Time magazine named her for the third time among the 100 most influential people in the world in the “icons” category.
