Adele – I Can’t Make You Love Me

Adele – Live at The Royal Albert Hall

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins MBE (born 5 May 1988), known simply as Adele, is a British singer 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” award and won the BBC Sound of 2008. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 to commercial and critical success. It certified four times platinum in the UK, and double platinum in the U.S. Her career in the U.S. was boosted by a Saturday Night Live appearance in late 2008. At the 51st Annual Grammy Awards, Adele received the awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

Adele released her second studio album, 21, in early 2011. The album was well received critically and surpassed the success of her début, earning the singer numerous awards in 2012 including a record-equalling six Grammy Awards,[10] including Album of the Year, two Brit Awards and three American Music Awards. The album has been certified 16 times platinum in the UK;[4] in the U.S. the album has held the top position longer than any other album since 1985, and is certified Diamond. The album has sold 30 million copies worldwide.

The success of 21 earned Adele numerous mentions in the Guinness World Records.Adele is the first female in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to have three singles in the top 10 at the same time as a lead artist, 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 and U.S. Albums Chart.In 2011 and 2012, Billboard named Adele Artist of the Year. In 2012, Adele was listed at number five on VH1’s 100 Greatest Women in Music and the American magazine Time named Adele one of the most influential people in the world.In 2013, she received an Academy Award as well as a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for her song “Skyfall”, written for the James Bond film of the same.

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born in Tottenham, north London, England, to Englishwoman Penny Adkins (born c. 1970) and Welshman Mark Evans on 5 May 1988. Evans left when Adele was two, leaving her 20-year-old mother to raise her single-handedly. She began singing at age four and asserts that she became obsessed with voices. Adele has cited the Spice Girls as a major influence in regard to her love and passion for music, stating that “they made me what I am today.”Adele impersonated the Spice Girls at dinner parties as a young girl. To make her look like English R&B and urban contemporary singer Gabrielle, her mother made an eye patch with sequins, which Adele later said was embarrassing.At the age of nine, Adele and her mother, a furniture maker and adult learning activities organiser, relocated to Brighton.

Two years later, she and her mother moved back to London; first to Brixton, and then to neighbouring district West Norwood, in south London.West Norwood is the subject for Adele’s first record, “Hometown Glory”, written when she was 16.After moving to south London, she became interested in R&B artists such as Aaliyah, Destiny’s Child and Mary J. Blige.

Adele says that one of the most defining moments in her life was when she watched Pink perform at Brixton Academy. “It was the Missundaztood record, so I was about 13 or 14. I had never heard, being in the room, someone sing like that live […] I remember sort of feeling like I was in a wind tunnel, her voice just hitting me. It was incredible.”

Aged 14, Adele discovered Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald by accident as she stumbled on the artists’ CDs in the jazz section of her local music store and was struck by their appearance on the album covers. Adele states she “started listening to Etta James every night for an hour”, and in the process was getting “to know my own voice.”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 A&R and hoped to launch other people’s careers.

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