Adele

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (/əˈdɛl/ ə-DEL; born 5 May 1988) is an English singer and songwriter. Regarded as a British cultural icon, she is known for her mezzo-soprano vocals and sentimental songwriting. Her accolades include 16 Grammy Awards, 12 Brit Awards (including three for British Album of the Year), an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. After graduating from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a record deal with XL Recordings. Her debut album, 19 (2008), included the UK top-five singles "Chasing Pavements" and "Make You Feel My Love", becoming one of best-selling debut albums ever in the UK. She received the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Her second studio album, 21 (2011), became the best-selling album of the 21st century. 21 holds the record for the top-performing album in US chart history, topping the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks, with the singles "Rolling in the Deep", "Someone like You", and "Set Fire to the Rain" heading charts worldwide and becoming her signature songs. The album received a record-tying six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. In 2012, Adele released "Skyfall", a soundtrack single for the James Bond film Skyfall, which won her the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Her third studio album, 25 (2015), broke first-week sales records in both the UK and US. In the US, it became the first album to sell over three million copies in a week. 25 earned her five Grammy Awards, including the Album of the Year. The lead single, "Hello", achieved huge success worldwide. Her fourth studio album, 30 (2021), contains "Easy on Me", which won her a Grammy Award in 2023. 25 and 30 became the best-selling albums worldwide, including the US and the UK, in 2015 and 2021, respectively. Adele is one of the world's best-selling music artists, with sales of over 120 million records worldwide. The best-selling female artist of the 21st century in the UK, she was named the best-selling artist of the 2010s in the US. Her studio albums 21 and 25 were the top two best-selling albums of the 2010s in the UK and both are listed among the best-selling albums in UK chart history, while in the US both are certified Diamond, the most of any artist who debuted in the 21st century. As of 2024,[update] all of her studio albums, except 19, have topped the yearly best-selling albums chart worldwide in the 21st century. Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on 5 May 1988 in Tottenham, London, to an English mother, Penny Adkins, and a Welsh father, Marc Evans. After Evans left when Adele was 2 years old, she was brought up by her mother. She began singing at age 4 and asserts that she became obsessed with voices. In 1997, 9-year-old Adele and her mother, who by then had found work as a furniture maker and an adult-learning activities organiser, relocated to Brighton on the south coast of England. In 1999, Adele and her mother moved back to London; first to Brixton, then to the neighbouring district of West Norwood in south London, which is the subject of her first song "Hometown Glory". Adele spent much of her youth in Brockwell Park where she would play the guitar and sing to friends, which she recalled in her 2015 song "Million Years Ago". She stated, "It has quite monumental moments of my life that I've spent there, and I drove past it [in 2015] and I just literally burst into tears. I really missed it." Adele graduated from the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon in May 2006, where she was a classmate of Leona Lewis and Jessie J. Adele credits the school with nurturing her talent even though, at the time, she was more interested in going into artists and repertoire (A&R) and hoped to launch other people's careers. In 2006, the then 17-year-old was billed as a featured vocalist on a single called "Be Divine" by a techno DJ named Ricsta. The song was issued under the now-defunct Stirfried Trax label and was the first under Adele's name. Described by Hugh McIntyre from Bustle as an "electronic club-ready" track, the song never charted and received little attention. Four months after graduating from the BRIT school, Adele continued writing music. She published two songs in the fourth issue of the online arts publication PlatformsMagazine.com. She recorded a three-song demo for a class project and gave it to a friend. The friend then posted the demo on Myspace, and the song became a hit. Richard Russell, director of the music label XL Recordings, took notice of the song and called Adele. She doubted if the offer was real and took a friend with her to the meeting. Nick Huggett, an executive at XL, took notice of Adele's talent and referred her to Jonathan Dickins of September Management. At the time, September was managing Jamie T, and Adele, a fan of the British singer-songwriter, decided to sign with Dickins. In June 2006, Dickins became Adele's official manager. In September 2006, Adele signed with XL Recordings.[citation needed] Adele provided vocals for Jack Peñate's song, "My Yvonne", for his debut album. It was during this session she first met producer Jim Abbiss, who would go on to produce both the majority of her debut album, 19, and tracks on 21. In June 2007, Adele made her television debut, performing "Daydreamer" on the BBC's Later... with Jools Holland. Adele's solo debut, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16, was released in October 2007 on Jamie T's label Pacemaker Recordings. Only five hundred records were pressed. Following its showcase on an episode of the British television show Skins, the song entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 32. It peaked at No. 19 on 27 July 2008, following its physical release. Later, the song would be rereleased on Adele's first album and, in 2010, was nominated for a Grammy. By the end of 2008, Adele's fame had grown rapidly. She became the first recipient of the Brit Awards Critics' Choice and was named the number-one predicted breakthrough act of 2008 in an annual poll of music critics, BBC's Sound of 2008. She released her second single, "Chasing Pavements", on 14 January 2008, two weeks ahead of her debut album. The song reached number two on the UK Chart, and stayed there for four weeks. The album 19, named for her age at the time she wrote and composed many of its songs, entered the British charts at number one. The Times Encyclopedia of Modern Music named 19 an "essential" blue-eyed soul recording. Adele was nominated for a 2008 Mercury Prize award for 19. She also won an Urban Music Award for "Best Jazz Act", and a Music of Black Origin (MOBO) nomination in the category of Best UK Female. In March 2008, Adele signed a deal with Columbia Records and XL Recordings for her foray into the United States. She embarked on a short North American tour in the same month, and 19 was released in the US in June. Billboard magazine stated: "Adele truly has potential to become among the most respected and inspiring international artists of her generation." The An Evening with Adele world tour began in May 2008 and ended in June 2009. Despite Adele's strong success in the UK, she struggled to break into North America. Adele cancelled the US tour dates of her 2008 tour to be with a former boyfriend. She said in Nylon magazine in June 2009, "I'm like, 'I can't believe I did that.' It seems so ungrateful...I was drinking far too much and that was kind of the basis of my relationship with this boy. I couldn't bear to be without him, so I was like, 'Well, I'll just cancel my stuff then.'" She referred to this period as her "early life crisis". Already possessing a dislike for flying, Adele experienced severe bouts of homesickness while away from London. On 18 October 2008, Adele was featured as the musical guest in an episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL). The episode, which included a planned appearance by then-US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, earned the program 17 million viewers. Adele performed "Chasing Pavements" and "Cold Shoulder",. The episode