Adele

Adele is an English singer and songwriter from Tottenham, London. She is known for a mezzo-soprano voice and for emotive songwriting. Her recording style is associated with blue-eyed soul, neo soul, pop, pop soul, R&B and soul, and she is also described as a UK soul and jazz singer. She is signed to XL Recordings and Melted Stone Music Ltd., and her live and recorded work is linked with September Management. She has also been associated with The Gangbang.

Early life and education

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins is born in 1988 in Tottenham, to an English mother, Penny Adkins, and a Welsh father, Marc Evans. Her father leaves when she is two, and she is raised by her mother. She starts singing at the age of four. During childhood she lives in south London, then moves to Brighton with her mother before returning to London. She later attends the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon and graduates in 2006.

Career

While studying, Adele records a demo that is posted on Myspace and attracts attention from XL Recordings. She signs with the label in 2006. Early in her career she provides guest vocals on recordings and makes her television debut in 2007 on Later... with Jools Holland. Her single “Hometown Glory”, first released in 2007, is later included on her debut album.

Her debut album, 19 (2008), reaches number one in the UK Albums Chart. It includes the UK top-five singles “Chasing Pavements” and “Make You Feel My Love”, and becomes one of the best-selling debut albums in the United Kingdom. She receives the Critics’ Choice Award at the Brit Awards and the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

Her second studio album, 21 (2011), is influenced by her personal experiences in the years before its release. It becomes one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century and tops the charts in more than 30 countries. In the United States it stays at number one on the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks, making it one of the longest-running number-one albums in that chart’s history. Its singles “Rolling in the Deep”, “Someone like You” and “Set Fire to the Rain” all achieve major international chart success. After a performance at the Brit Awards in 2011, “Someone like You” reaches number one in the UK, and Adele becomes the first living artist since the Beatles to have two singles and two albums simultaneously in the UK top five.

Adele undergoes vocal cord surgery in 2011 after a haemorrhage and later returns to performing. A live recording, Live at the Royal Albert Hall, is released in the same period and becomes a commercial success in the music video category. At the Grammy Awards in 2012, 21 wins six awards, including Album of the Year.

In 2012, she records and releases “Skyfall”, the theme song for the James Bond film of the same name. The song wins the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Her third studio album, 25 (2015), sets first-week sales records in the United Kingdom and the United States, becoming the first album in the US to sell more than three million copies in its first week. It receives five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. The lead single “Hello” reaches number one in multiple countries.

Between 2016 and 2017, Adele tours extensively across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. She performs at Glastonbury Festival in 2016 and completes the tour with performances at Wembley Stadium in 2017. Her fourth album, 30 (2021), includes “Easy on Me”, which reaches number one in multiple countries and wins the Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance in 2023. 30 also reaches number one in several international charts and is the best-selling album globally in 2021.

After the release of 30, Adele announces a Las Vegas concert residency titled Weekends with Adele, which begins in 2022 after an initial postponement. The residency is extended several times and she also performs a series of concerts in Munich in 2024. In 2024, she says in an interview that she intends to take an indefinite break from music after completing the residency.

Awards and recognition

Adele has won 16 Grammy Awards, 12 Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. She has sold more than 120 million records worldwide. In the United Kingdom, she is described as the best-selling female artist of the 21st century, and in the United States she is the best-selling artist of the 2010s. Her albums 21 and 25 are among the highest-selling albums of the 2010s in the UK and are both certified Diamond in the United States.