Guðbjörg Skúladóttir

Who is Adele?

1. Introducing Adele Laurie Blue Adkins

Her real name is erHerAdele Laurie Blue Adkins and she is a well-known singer from Tottenham, England,
she is known professionally as Adele. She is born the 5^thof May 1988 which makes her 23 years old now. She first made an appearance, in 2008, on Saturday Night Life. After her debut album, "19", Adele received very much recognition and also after her performance on Saturday Night Live, in 2008. In the 2009 she won the Grammy Awards for “Best New Artist” and “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance”. I first heard her song in the episode of So You Think You Can Dance, “Hometown Glory” and I instantly liked that song.

2. Early Life and Family

Adele was born in Enfield, North London. She was raised by her mother who was a single teenager at that time. She began singing at the age of four and instantly became obsessed with voices. Her biggest inspiration of all time wore the “Spice Girls”, she said “they made me what I am today”.(Wikipedia)
Even though Adele came from a non-musical family her mother was very supportive to Adele’s passion to music from the start. Her mother used to set up stage for her in the living room and let Adele perform in front of her mother’s friend. When she turned 11 she and her mother moved to West Norwood, moving away from her hometown made her write her first song “Hometown Glory”. Like most teenage girls, Adele liked to make a cover of songs, for example she did Blondie’s – “Heart of Glass” , Gabriella the British singer and many others. She always had a feeling that it was her destiny to be a singer. The first time Adele realized that singing was something that she wanted to do was when she held a microphone for the very first time when she was 14 years old. When she was growing up, Adele´s became more interested in wide variety music; she even went through a heavy metal phase. She entered The Brit School to cultivate her singing; this school had graduated many famous names like Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash and Leona Lewis. Adele was so lucky to have met Shinagai Shoniwa, a singer who later on joined the band, The Noisettes. Living next door to her, Adele made use of the opportunity to sing with her, Adele confessed later that is was for Shinagai Shoniwa that made her want to write songs not just sing covers. She graduated from The Brit School in May 2006.

3. Her Career

Her career began after Adele graduated from The Brit School. She made a MySpace page like any other musician did, trying to boost her singing career. She had already made few songs which she posted on the page and got great feedbacks. Later she than got a phone call from music label XL Recordings telling her that Nick Huggett from XL Recordings wanted to meet with her. In the meeting Nick recommended Adele to manager Jonathan Dickins and in June 2006 he became her official representative. In September, Huggett assigned Adele to the XL Recording and in October 2007 her breakthrough song, “Hometown Glory”, was released. Than in 2008 she blossomed. She had an album called “19”; she released it in 2008 and was nominated for many awards, for example Mercury Price, Urban Music Award for “Best Jazz Act”, Q Awards and others. She signed a deal with Columbia Records, trying to make it in the US. Adele had a US tour that was supposed to began in May 2008 and end in June 2009, but because of her former boyfriend and her drinking problem she canceled the tour. She than later apologized for and said it was ungrateful of her. Her album “19” was released in the US, June 2008, but it became clear in October the same year, that her attempt to break into the US had failed. Than by some reasons she was asked to perform in “Saturday Night Live” show and on the same day he album “19” ranked the number 5 in iTunes and kept rising and by February 2009 the album was golden. She won and was nominated for several awards. Adele won “Best New Artist” and “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance” at the 51^st Grammy Awards.
Adele released her second album, “21”, in January 2011. The record became very popular right away; in July 2011 the album was the best-selling album in the first half of that year. The first single on the record was “Rolling in the Deep” which reached number 1 in 8 countries on the hit list and the song has sold about 4,8 millions copies. Right after “Rolling in the Deep”, another album track “Someone Like You “ went straight to the top and set another record, it was the first song to sell over a million copies in the UK this decade. After this success, Adele arraigned an “Adele Live Tour” which was very successful as well and fans were very happy with it. In August 2011, she revealed that she has already written 7 new songs for her next album.

4. Her Voice and Music Style

Adele’s voice has been described with many adjectives. People say that her voice is very unique and it is impossible to compare her voice to anyone else. No one has a voice like Adele. Her voice has been categorized as “Contralto”, which is the deepest female classical singing voice, very low. Many people may not know this but Adele chains-smokes and some might thing that the smoking should affect her voice but it still hasn’t, but let’s hope that she will stop that habit. Despite from her talented gift as a beautiful songwriter and indescribable voice, she plays the piano, guitar and the bass. It has been said that Adele has been a big influence for some artist in the music world, such as Beyoncé Knowles, she said that Adele was her influence to make her 4^th album.
Her voice compares with her music style which is soft and romantic; it can even heal broken hearts some may say. Her first album was about her breakdown with her former boyfriend that didn’t end well. Almost every single song from her is personal and written from her own experience and live, which make them better, from my opinion. Adele likes all of her songs but after every one of them she still thinks that she can do better and that her best song hasn’t come out yet, she wants to add more depth to her songs. Now, Adele wants to find her own sound, something new. She says in an interview with The Telegraph:
“I’d like to find my own sound. Not something new, just something that’s right for me. A definitive sound, like when you hear a song and you know who it is straight away. But after discovering all this music in America, it’s like there’s another million genres, it’s going to take my whole lifetime to listen to all the music that’s out there. I wonder what I’ll discover next, and that’s exciting.” (The Telegraph)

5. Interview with Eyrún - Love's Adele

The girl I interviewed about Adele was Eyrún Eva Eyþórsdóttir, 19 year old student in Borgarholtsskóli. Her music taste is very similar to mine so she was perfect for this interview because she loves, loves, loves Adele, as do I.

Eyrún said that she couldn’t make up her mind that her best female singer was, so she gave that Adele is one of her two, but we all know Adele Is number one for herJ. Her love to Adele is so much because she thinks her voice is so unique and beautiful and the same about her lyrics. She giggles and blushes for a second and than say’s that she can sometimes relate to her songs.
Eyrún first heard was not that long ago, maybe a year or year and a half. The first songs that she heard were “Hometown Glory” and “Make me feel my love” and she immediately fell in love with Adele. Her most favorite quality about Adele is her voice, of course, and how she sings even better live than she does in the studio. You don’t see that very often with famous singers. Eyrúns predict for Adele is very promising, she thinks Adele will rise very much in the music world, probably like Justin Bieber and Lady GaGa.

6. Conclusion

Obviously it turns out that Adele is a very well-known singer and a song-writer. Her full name is Adele Laurie Blue Adkins and she was raised by a teenager mother who supported her passion to music and singing. She’s been very successful despite that her career has just begun; it started after she graduated from The Brit School in 2006. Her songs are very beautiful and from her own personal experience and something to add to these gorgeous songs, that she writes, she sings with her very unique voice. Something that people think is special about Adele is how she sounds better live than in the studio which we don’t hear very often in famous singers. Adele has given out 2 albums, “19” and “21” both of them very good. Now she is planning on the 3^rd album and is trying to find her own sound to it. As you can see here above, Adele’s career has only begun and been active for 5 years, she has many years left in the music business if she keeps up the good work she’s been doing. She will rise and who knows, maybe she will be as famous as Justin Bieber and Lady GaGa, just like Eyrún said.

7. Vocabulary

Recognition = recognizing or being recognized. To know someone

Variety = quality of not being the same

Cultivate = prepare to grow

Boost = increase the value

feedbacks. = Return of part of the output of a system to its source

representative = serving to portray or show; serving as an example of a class or group

breakthrough = major achievement

blossomed = flower, esp of fruit-tree

ungrateful = Not showing gratitude

attempt= make a start of doing something

revealed = allow or cause to been seen