Happy Birthday Adele

On 05 May, City Connect celebrates the 25th birthday of Adele, the superstar singer who in 2013, she received an Academy Award as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for her song “Skyfall”, written for Skyfall, the twenty-third James Bond film. After suffering from a vocal cord haemorrhage in October 2011, Adele underwent laser microsurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in November of that year.

Biography

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, better known mononymously as Adele (often stylized as ADELE), is an English recording artist and songwriter. Adele was offered a recording contract from XL Recordings after a friend posted her demo on MySpace in 2006. The next year she received the Brit Awards “Critics’ Choice” and won the BBC Sound of 2008. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 to much commercial and critical success. The album is certified four times platinum in the UK, and double platinum in the US. Her career in the US was boosted by a Saturday Night Live appearance in late 2008. At the 2009 Grammy Awards, Adele received the awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

Adele released her second album, 21, in early 2011. The album was well received critically and surpassed the success of her debut. 21 helped Adele earn six Grammy Awards in 2012 including Album of the Year, making her the second female artist after Beyoncé Knowles in Grammy Awards history to win six categories in a single night.

The album has also helped her receive numerous other awards, including two Brit Awards and three American Music Awards. 21 has been certified 15 times platinum in the UK; in the US the album has held the top position longer than any other album since 1985. The album has sold over 4 million copies in the UK where it is the fifth best-selling album of all time. Since 21 was released in 2011, it has spent 23 weeks at number one and has beaten Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black to become the biggest selling album of the 21st Century.

The success of 21 earned Adele numerous mentions in the Guinness Book Of World Records. She is the first artist to sell more than 3 million copies of an album in a year in the UK. With her two albums and the first two singles from 21, “Rolling in the Deep” and “Someone Like You“, Adele became the first living artist to achieve the feat of two top five hits in both the UK Official Singles Chart and the Official Albums Chart simultaneously since the Beatles in 1964.

With her third release from the album, “Set Fire to the Rain“, becoming her third number one single in the US, Adele became the first artist in history to lead the Billboard 200 concurrently with three Billboard Hot 100 number ones.

Adele is also the first female artist to have three singles in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, and the first female artist to have two albums in the top five of the Billboard 200 and two singles in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously.

21 is the longest running number one album by a female solo artist on the UK Albums Chart and is the longest running number one album by a female in Billboard history.

In 2011, Billboard named Adele artist of the year. In 2012, Adele was listed at number five on VH1′s 100 Greatest Women In Music, and American magazine Time named Adele one of the most influential people in the world.

Adele appeared on the cover of the March 2012 issue of US Vogue looking stunning and did not appear to have a problem with her weight after the recent controversy surrounding Karl Lagerfeld’s comment that she was “too fat”.

In October 2012, Adele confirmed that she had been writing and recording the theme song for Skyfall, the twenty-third James Bond film. The song “Skyfall”, co-written with producer Paul Epworth, was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, and features orchestrations by J. A. C. Redford. Adele stated recording “Skyfall” was “one of the proudest moments of my life.” On 14 October, “Skyfall” rose to number 2 on the UK Singles Chart with sales of 92,000 copies bringing its overall sales to 176,000, and “Skyfall” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 8, Adele’s first song to debut in the Top 10, selling 261,000 copies in the United States in its first three days. This tied “Skyfall” with Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill” as the highest-charting James Bond theme song on the UK Singles Chart. “Skyfall” has sold more than two million copies worldwide. In January 2013 Adele won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and in February 2013 Adele won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Skyfall”.

Adele’s voice is categorised as contralto. Initially, critics suggested that her vocals were more developed and intriguing than her songwriting, a sentiment with which Adele agreed. Adele’s first album is of the soul genre, with lyrics describing heartbreak and relationship. Her success occurred simultaneously with several other British female soul singers, with the British press dubbing her a new Amy Winehouse. This was described as a third British Musical Invasion of the US. However, Adele called the comparisons between her and other female soul singers lazy, noting “we’re a gender, not a genre”. By the beginning of 2009, listeners and critics started to describe Adele as unique. AllMusic wrote that “Adele is simply too magical to compare her to anyone.”

American singer Beyoncé Knowles cited Adele as one of the influences for her fourth album, 4. Madonna expressed a desire to collaborate with Adele, commenting; “I think she’s brilliant, I love her”. J. J. Burnel of The Stranglers is also a fan, stating; “She had me riveted… Of course she’s huge and normally that would turn me off because it’s too commercial. But I was seriously impressed”. Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters and Nirvana has repeatedly praised Adele in interviews.

It was reported in January 2012 that Adele was dating charity entrepreneur and Old Etonian Simon Konecki. In June 2012, Adele announced that she and Konecki were expecting a baby. Adele gave birth to the couple’s son on 19 October 2012.

When on tour, Adele requires all backstage visitors to donate a minimum charitable contribution of $20 for the UK charity Sands, an organization dedicated to “supporting anyone affected by the death of a baby and promoting research to reduce the loss of babies’ lives”. During the UK and European leg of her Adele Live tour, Adele collected $13,000 for the charity.

Images reproduced from uijiykhe.rzanit.homedns.org, Wikipedia Commons, cbc.ca and US Vogue
Video reproduced from YouTube / adelelondon
Biography text reproduced from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

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