“There is just something SO different about Adele, and once you fall into the fandom, you're in for life.” – Paige, age 16 (almost 17), member of the online Church of Adele
She sings with a choir’s strength, with a smoky, supple alto turning her sorrow into treasured gold. She has the R&B swagger of Amy Winehouse and the big-ballad poise of an artist well beyond her 23 years. She’s brilliant, it’s true. Still, just how in the world did Adele Adkins happen?
Make no mistake, Adele, the English superstar who sold out her concerts in Montreal on Monday and Toronto on Wednesday, is absolutely happening. Without the sex-splashed shenanigans of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, the singer-songwriter’s second album, 21, has sold in excess of five million copies and sits atop charts in more than a dozen countries, five months after its release. It’s a very good record – a flooring, soulful account of heartbreak – but there’s more to her appeal than songs alone.
“She’s relatable and, for me, she’s got the best voice of her generation,” says Jonathan Dickins, Adele’s manager. “But I think the key for every great singer is whether or not you believe what’s being sung. And with Adele, I think you absolutely believe every word coming from her mouth.”
Fair enough. But I must say, while sharing a couch with the singer earlier this year, I could not believe the words coming from the likeable superstar. She mentioned her pet dachshund (dubbed Louis Armstrong) and a second one she is hoping to acquire (to be named Ella Fitzgerald). Will she mate them? “No, I had Louis’s balls cut off about a year ago,” she cracked.
Oh yes, madam, Adele, dubbed “the girl with the mighty mouth” by The Guardian, is refreshingly blunt. It’s another of her qualities that attracts fans. When asked about her work on 21 with the eccentric Rick Rubin – one of the album’s seven credited producers, Adele among them – she said she had heard a lot of different stories about him. “I started [soiling] myself, because this guy didn’t sound consistent,” she recalled. “But he was amazing once we were in the studio.”
Adele is signed to the British independent label XL Recordings. Unlike, say, England’s Leona Lewis, a pop singer with a big soulless voice and a wood-panelled personality who rose to fame on the strength of a televised talent search and subsequent major-label promotion, Adele’s rise has been fairly organic. Her debut album, 19 – like 21, its title reflects the singer’s age when the album was made – marked a strong beginning. The LP sold more than three million copies worldwide.
The new album’s material is more polished and grand, though again it’s inspired by a collapsed relationship. Bluesy opening tracks Rolling in the Deep and Rumour Has It reveal an emboldened artist. The “heartbreak superstar,” as proclaimed by Rolling Stone magazine, describes her approach for 21 as “a bit more boisterous, with more swagger and attitude.”
There wasn’t any breakout moment, though her soul-baring performance of Someone Like You on this year’s Brit Awards gave Adele a boost. Unlike her heroes Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand and Patsy Cline, Adele insists on singing her own material. “The songs I like, they convince me, and transport me off into this little world, and they make me gasp for air and hold my breath,” she explained. “I don’t think I could convince myself if I tried to sing someone else’s songs.”
With her earthiness, openness, accessible songs and golden voice, Adele is something like Norah Jones multiplied by Aretha Franklin, convincingly staking a claim to the huge mainstream ground between the underdog old maid Susan Boyle and the salacious, vamping Winehouse.
Like Winehouse, Adele can be naughty, but not in a train-wreck way: She said she enjoys a “tipple,” but now keeps to red wine instead of spirits. And while she had been off cigarettes for six weeks when I spoke with her – “I’m bitter,” she disclosed, “I need a smoke badly” – she has since resumed smoking.
Loyalists contacted by e-mail through the singer’s online chat group include 16-year-old Paige, who finds inspiration in the artist’s self-confidence: “[That] she is so comfortable with herself and her body, even though some people say nasty things, just reminds people that they can reach their dream no matter what size or shape they are.”
A 42-year-old follower, who goes by the chat-group moniker Azule, admires Adele for her genuineness: “She drops the pretense. We’re able to connect with her rage, grief and loss. And her vulnerability is palpable.”
And so it’s a tidy packet – song and true spirit, with a personable, cheeky demeanour – that galvanizes Adele’s audience. Says Jeff Winskell, music director with Vancouver’s Virgin Radio 95.3 FM: “Adele’s songs may follow a typical pop-music formula, but they stand out drastically on a Top-40 station because of not only her voice, but the very Motown-ish arrangements. Her music is perceived as more organic, traditional and timeless, and that perception is propelled by her openness about being a real woman. ... She loves being ‘her.’ ”
The real woman with the fake eyelashes played down her role as some sort of plus-sized role model – “It’s not something I resist, but it’s not something I totally embrace either” – and would prefer not to be recognized as an anti-Gaga or a Perry-opposite. “I admire artists who have that kind of fire in their belly,” she said.
She described herself as a prankster, but Adele doesn't see herself resorting to hijinks on stage. “I'm not brave enough to put whipped-cream guns on my boobs,” she joked, referring to the Perry's interesting choices in toppings. “I'd just be embarrassed. I'd giggle the whole time.”
And she’d have a full legion laughing along with her, you’d have to think.
