A cross-generation musical diva that continues to set the standard high - perhaps that's what describes Adele best. The British singer, who hails from London, England, is one of the world's best-selling artists of all time with a total of over 120 million records. Her distinctive strong voice is just one of her many talents, and she's not showing any sign of slowing down at 34 years of age.
"Didn't your therapist at one point say, 'You need to sit with the 7-year-old Adele'? And when you did that, sat with the 7-year-old Adele, what did you find?," Oprah Winfrey asked the singer during a November 2021 interview, to which she replied, "A very sad little girl."
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There is still so much to say about Adele, though - from her humble beginning to how a class project ended up landing on a record label executive who helped her craft her music. Here's a slight look into Adele's life before fame and what the future holds in store for the "Easy on Me" singer.
Adele Adkins was born in 1988 in a family of an English mother, Penny, and a Welsh father, Marc. The latter, however, left when she was only two, leaving young Adele under the sole care of her mother. She ended up never meeting her father until she turned 15.
"He did apologize then, but I was 15, I didn't want to hear it then," she admitted. Learning that he was "a really big alcoholic" with "loads of demons," Adele managed to find peace with him shortly before his passing where she played her latest album, 30, to him on Zoom. She added, "My dad's absolute lack of presence and effort... But I finally understood that it was the alcohol ... It took my dad from me."
Young Adele started singing at the age of four, thanks to her mother who purchased a toy guitar from a charity shop. She later stumbled across a collection of Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald's music. She recalled in an interview with The Telegraph, "There was no musical heritage in our family. Chart music was all I ever knew. So when I listened to the Ettas and the Ellas, it sounds so cheesy, but it was like an awakening."
While Adele was attending the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology, where she was a classmate of Leona Lewis and Jessie J, Adele began to craft her music. A few months after her 2006 graduation, she published a three-song demo for a class project and posted it on MySpace.
After a successful online release, a phone call from Richard Russell, XL Recordings' honcho. She told Rolling Stones, "I went in thinking I could get a scouting job - then they said, 'We want to sign you.'"
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A year after signing with the label, Adele released her debut breakthrough song, "Hometown Glory," in 2007. She wrote the track when she was 16, but it already displays so much character maturity through every note.
At the time, young Adele had an argument with her mother, who wanted her to pursue a university education in another city. She wrote the track as a way to revolt, but years later, the Jim Abbiss-produced song amassed a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
Adele released her hotly anticipated debut album, 19, in January 2008. The 8x platinum-certified album is 43 minutes of softly-crooned soul and raw talents, which landed her a Grammy win for Best New Artist alongside Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for its sophomore single, "Chasing Pavements."
"I just kinda remember becoming a bit of a woman during that time," Adele said at the time. "And I think that is definitely documented in the songs."
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As Adele's popularity took off in her home country, she gradually generated loyal fanbases all around the world. The monumental project arrived in 2011 when she announced the Motown/soul-influenced second album, 21, on January 24th.
Its vintage aesthetic deals with themes of heartbreak, forgiveness, and healing like never before, which helped defy her commercial performance: becoming one of the highest-selling artists in the world of that year.
Fast-forward to the 2020s, Adele's name has already risen as one of the world's best performers of all time. At the age of 34, she's in her immaculate maturity following her publicly-documented divorce and weight loss journey. Her latest album, 30, deals with themes of fame, motherhood, and hope for a better tomorrow. The British Album of the Year didn't exactly exceed the sales of her previous two albums, but it ended up on the list of the world's highest-selling albums of the year.
To propel her latest album, Adele is set to run her Las Vegas residency concert: a 32-dates concert that runs from November 18, 2022, to March 25, 2023. Despite having a few rough patches as a result of the previous cancellation, the singer apologized to fans for the "horrible decision" and has already rescheduled it. ​​​​​​​