I've got nothing bad to say about Adele. I'm not a mad man. It seems like everybody loves Adele. I've been shopping in Safeway and an Adele song comes on- everybody sings along. The people working there, the people shopping there. Teenagers and old people. Black, white, and everyone else. In era when nobody buys albums anymore, a stunning number of people got hers. It's the rare case of a top artist consciously and deliberately pulling her catalog from streaming services and making us buy a hard copy (Taylor Swift also comes to mind). And, yes, I did buy it - as a holiday gift for my wife in 2015. My goodness, with those omnipresent commercials I had to. Those Target commercials that kept popping up, ironically enough, on Hulu and YouTube, during the holidays really got to me. She's just like ripping out my heart while making eye-contact, and she's just looking at me, and it's just like- yes,fine! yes- please take my money and give me your record of these songs, please! I will pay actual MONEY for your PHYSICAL MEDIA. (One advertisement was with lead single "Hello," but the one for "A Million Years Ago" is the real killer.) It's an outrageous and widespread phenomenon, so clearly she is doing something very right. I suppose it's having raw talent, and the ability to tap into strong emotions through those talents. And that talent is almost all in her singing. It's not like she is famous for her dance moves or guitar solos. It's all about that voice. She does mostly write the songs (on guitar, she says), and I guess she plays some instruments sometimes, but just to hear this lady sing is an amazing experience. People pay good money to experience that live. As well they should. At one point the BBC says that her "melodies exude warmth, her singing is occasionally stunning and...she has tracks that make Lily Allen and Kate Nash sound every bit as ordinary as they are." Such a burn! It's sad but true, but Lily Allen and Kate Nash have other things going for them. And one need not always listen to serious or "good" music.
Adele only has three albums so far. They are all great- each slightly better than the previous one. It's kinda crazy that she gets discovered and her record is put out by XL Recordings, who I had previously thought of as putting out (mostly?) house music and early techno.
She puts on 19 when she is only 19, so that's part of the impressiveness. It's the most stark of her albums, but it was a big hit with critics and the public, especially at home in Britain. "Chasing Pavements" is the standout track (and Grammy winner), but "Hometown Glory" started her career. I like the Dylan cover, "Make you Feel My Love," which erases the relevancy of Billy Joel's cover of the same song. "Right as Rain" will also be a good song for all time.
Apparently we have Sarah Palin to thank for Adele breaking into the American music scene. Her album wasn't doing much here until she appeared on the same SNL episode that Palin appeared on. It was their highest rated episode in years, and Adele's sales starting skyrocketing here after that, topping the iTunes chart (remember when that was important!) the next day. She cleans up at the Grammys that year.
Her second album, aptly titled 21, comes out and is an even bigger deal. Something like 31 million people bought this record! Besides earning the longest running #1 album on the charts by a female artist EVER, she also becomes the first woman in history to have three simultaneous Top 10 singles, and the first woman to have two albums in the Top 5 at the same time. OK! They keep throwing Grammys at her. I hadn't realized that Rick Rubin did some production here, but on the deeper cuts. I think of it as the album on which she discovered the drums that were occasionally sorely missing from the first album. And they really kick on numbers like "Rolling in the Deep" and especially "Rumour Has It." "Someone Like You" is the killer - and, again, it will probably remain so for eternity. "Set Fire to the Rain" was also another international Number 1, but it never registered with me as much as the other three. There are still plenty of the down-tempo contemplative numbers that largely made up her first album. Apparently they call her "blue-eyed soul," and we can perhaps tackle another time whether or not that's a racist term; Daryl Hall thinks so. The first albums are "soul" music in the sense that they deal primarily with heartbreak, suffering, and loss, while contemplating music's ability to transcend with hope; something about her emphatic phrasing too. The second album is more folksy while still soulful, but the rocking bits help. It also sounds like the blues too me occasionally, but whatever you want to call it. "The album's success has been attributed to its cross-cultural appeal." It's also just pop falling into the chasm that is The Monogenre. The Singularity is always getting closer, of course...
"Skyfall" is the excellent theme song she contributed to the James Bond movie of the same name. It charts well and gets her another Grammy. I don't know how we are supposed to hear it though. Buy a damn single?! It inexplicably appears on neither her album nor the movie's soundtrack album. So let's watch the official video:
In 2012 she gets Arts of of the Year and Album of the Year from Billboard
Finally, she kicks it up yet another notch for her third and most recent album 25. Guess how old she was when it came out. It sells so many albums it floats the whole Billboard charts, erasing a previous year's decline in album sales, and makes tons of journalist write about how CDs aren't dead... yet. Whereas the previous was her break-up record, she calls this one her "make-up album." It's funny because, she made it when she was 25 and this is the album where's singing about getting old. The lyrics are like The Avett Brothers, all responsible, deep adulthood, while yearning for the days of youth. Oh, Adele - hang in there! It's the fasting selling album in UK history. It is the most produced of her albums. She said it was a chiefly inspired by Madonna's Ray of Light; it's not that electronica-y, but where it is it benefits from the more modern sounds, which blend seamlessly and effectively with her timeless voice. One story goes that she heard a Taylor Swift song on the radio and said, "Can I have a song like that?" She got Tay's producer, Max Martin, and the results are "Send my Love," which slickened up her sounds with pop-music beats and such. Hey, if it gets Adele played on pop radio (it does) and headlining festivals (it did) then I'm all for it. "River Lea" is a another strong track, even if it's not a single. "Water Under the Bridge" is great too. As is "When We Were Young." This a truly great album with ton of excellent songs. Of course, the multi-award winning "Hello" dominated the singles charts and the public consciousness during this period. When the video was released a million people every hour were watching it on YouTube, breaking more records, even Tay's for "Bad Blood." She performs live at Radio City Music Hall, which is recorded and broadcast by NBC right around Christmas, so everyone watched it - my entire family included. She closes out her tour, and trilogy of albums, with Finale shows at Wembley Arena. Those picking up on the theme should not be surprised to learn that the events broke all previous attendance records.
So we are left to wonder- what is it about this woman that make her 10, 50, 100 times more successfully than other contemporary musical acts? Surely, it can't be just her voice. It might have something to do with her humble begging and demeanor. An (at least) acceptable backstory is absolutely essential for cross-over mainstream gargantuan success of this magnitude. To people in the UK she defines pop culture. She might have one of the greatest voices in the world today, but she doesn't seem too full of her self; she's always very down-to-earth in her performances, and she's not afraid of making a mistake either. Hasn't she restarted a performance mid-way on more than one televised occasion? It makes her seem human, rather than super-human, despite her stunning abilities. Add in her extensive philanthropy plus occasional nods to feminism, the LGTBQ+ community, and her working-class roots, it becomes increasingly clear that Adele is entirely deserving of all the attention she gets from nearly everyone.
