Adele | Biography, Songs, Albums, Hello, 30, & Facts | Britannica (2024)

Adele (born May 5, 1988, Tottenham, London, England) is an English pop singer and songwriter whose soulful emotive voice and traditionally crafted songs made her one of the most broadly popular performers of her generation.

Adkins was raised by a young single mother in various working-class neighbourhoods of London. As a child, she enjoyed singing contemporary pop music and learned to play the guitar and the clarinet. However, it was not until her early teens, when she discovered rhythm-and-blues singer Etta James and other mid-20th-century performers, that she began to consider a musical career. While she honed her talents at a government-funded secondary school for the performing arts, a friend began posting songs Adkins had written and recorded onto the social networking Web site Myspace. Her music eventually caught the attention of record labels, and in 2006, several months after graduating, she signed a contract with XL Recordings.

After building anticipation in Britain with some well-received live performances, Adele (as she now billed herself) released her first album, 19, in 2008. (The title referred to the age at which she penned most of the tracks.) The recording debuted at number one on the British album chart, and critics praised Adele’s supple phrasing, her tasteful arrangements, and her ability to channel her intimate emotional experiences (especially with heartbreak) into songs that had wide resonance. She also earned comparisons to Amy Winehouse, another young British singer conspicuously influenced by soul music. (For many fans, however, Adele’s zaftig figure and down-to-earth persona made her the more-relatable star.) A performance on the television program Saturday Night Live helped introduce Adele to American audiences, and in early 2009 she won Grammy Awards for best new artist and best female pop vocal performance (for the lush bluesy song “Chasing Pavements”).

For her next album, Adele enlisted a number of songwriters and producers, including Rick Rubin, to collaborate with her. The result, 21 (2011), was a bolder and more stylistically diverse set of material, with singles ranging from the earthy gospel- and disco-inflected “Rolling in the Deep” to the affecting breakup ballad “Someone like You.” Both songs hit number one in multiple countries, and, despite a vocal-cord ailment that forced Adele to cancel numerous tour dates in 2011, the album became the biggest-selling release of the year in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Additionally, with worldwide sales of more than 20 million copies by mid-2012, it was credited with helping revive the flagging recording industry.

Following successful throat surgery, Adele performed at the 2012 Grammy Awards ceremony. She also collected six Grammy trophies, including those for album, record, and song of the year (the latter two honoured “Rolling in the Deep”). Days later she received two Brit Awards (the British equivalent of the Grammys). The sales spike for 21 after both events further confirmed the singer’s emergence as a commercial juggernaut. In 2013 Adele won the Grammy for best pop solo performance for “Set Fire to the Rain,” from her concert album Live at the Royal Albert Hall (2011), and she picked up an Academy Award for the brassy theme song she provided for the blockbuster James Bond movie Skyfall (2012). Later that year she was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

Adele returned in 2015 with the album 25. Although some critics felt it did not take enough risks, Adele’s voice was no less powerful, and her ability to sell records remained undiminished. The yearning single “Hello” became a hit in numerous countries, and more than 20 million copies of the album were sold worldwide. In addition, 25 earned Adele five more Grammys, including another sweep of the top categories (album, song, and record of the year). In 2021 the singer released her fourth studio album, 30. The emotionally candid work—many of the songs deal with her divorce and its aftermath—was widely acclaimed, and the single “Easy on Me” won the Grammy for best pop solo performance.