Adele: The Voice That Filled the Room, and the Woman Who Insisted Beyoncé Should Win
Adele wrote her first song, “Hometown Glory,” at 16, about the London suburb of West Norwood. She recorded a three-song demo for a school project, gave it to a friend, and the friend put it on MySpace. It spread, the boss of XL Recordings picked up the phone, and in 2006, at 17, she signed.
Her second album, 21, came out in January 2011 and made her voice the sound of a decade: “Rolling in the Deep,” “Someone Like You.” She sang heartbreak without ornament, as if she was not afraid of the truth. That, more than any technique, is what made rooms go silent.
At the 2017 Grammys she won Album of the Year over Beyoncé’s Lemonade and said she could not accept it: Beyoncé, she said, was the artist of her life. Backstage she asked what on earth Beyoncé had to do to win. The story goes that she even broke the trophy to share it. A winner who insists the loser deserved it more is rare at any award show.
A year earlier, in February 2016, her Grammy performance of “All I Ask” was spoiled by a technical fault: a microphone fell onto the piano strings and made it sound out of tune. She kept singing with dignity, afterward said she cried pretty much all day, and joked that she was treating herself to an In-N-Out. At the 2017 ceremony, when her George Michael tribute started badly, she stopped and began again, saying she could not mess this up for him.
Her album 25 sold more than 3.3 million copies in a single week in the United States, a record until Taylor Swift. Yet she never chased glitter: a piano, a voice and a story are enough for Adele. Her whole attitude to music fits in one line: no mask. She sings the way she lives, loudly, honestly and without apology, and the audience feels it in the first bar.
Adele has her own station in the Exclusive collection of Kalisha. Open the radio and press play.
— Kalisha 🎧
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