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Adele takes blame for cancelling her shows, but stands by the decision: “I was embarrassed [to cancel the shows]. But it actually made my confidence in myself grow, because it was a very brave thing to do. I’m very proud of myself for standing by my artistic needs.”

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Adele: ‘It Fucking Devastated Me’ How she turned heartache over her divorce into her most honest album yet

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Adele: ‘It Fucking Devastated Me’ How she turned heartache over her divorce into her most honest album yet

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Taken from Rolling Stone (2021), Adele recalls how fans were pleased about her divorce because it would generate new and personal music. The consistency in her star image, here, has harmed her and produced negative affects to her personal life. Fans almost get pleasure from her personal issues.

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maybe, just maybe, she could quietly slip news of her and her husband's separation into the world without much notice. It was Good Friday, 2019, and their marriage had been over for some time. A holiday weekend, she figured, might deflect some of the attention she had been dreading.

"Fucking idiot," she says of her plan.

Adele and her husband, Simon Konecki, had been together since 2011. Their relationship was remarkably under the radar given Adele's growing stardom, partly because she really only emerged from her life as a wife and mother to their son, Angelo, to release record-shattering albums. Their wedding was so private there aren't even pictures online.

Adele's dread only intensified after a press release went out that Good Friday evening. A close friend flew out from England to Los Angeles to make sure the then-30-year-old wasn't on her own as the news spread. Tweets and memes flooded social media, expressing not just shock that the relationship had ended, but also excitement at the idea that Adele's heartbreak would inspire new music.

You can understand where the fans were coming from. Adele built her empire on heartache: moving reflections of pain and its aftermath, like finding " Someone Like You," or merely saying "Hello" to an ex after years have passed. At the time Adele and Konecki announced their breakup, nearly four years had passed since her last album, and her audience was hungry for something new. And what's a better album prompt than a high-profile divorce?

For Adele, the fan reaction was bewildering. "During something like that, that kind of significant thing to happen in life, your mind sort of goes to those places: 'Why don't they like me? Why would they write that if they've followed me for 10 years?' But in reality, that's not their responsibility. In reality, their responsibility as a fan is to want a good record and to hope I deliver. So I took it with a pinch of salt, and it was fine."

(Adele knows a thing or two about waiting forever for a favorite artist to release new music, like her friend Kendrick Lamar. "Fucking hell!" she says of her anticipation for the rapper's next LP. Unlike her fans, she's already had the privilege of hearing a few of Lamar's new songs in the interim.)

Adele had enough to worry about besides Twitter and the expectation of new music. Rumors and assumptions spread like wildfire, but the reality is that there were no heroes or villains in her divorce. Konecki was a good husband and continues to be a great father to Angelo. He's still one of Adele's best friends, even texting her memes while she and I are together. Instead, the end came with the heartbreaking, if less dramatic, feeling that she was getting further from the person she hoped to be.

"I didn't really know myself," she says. "I thought I did. I don't know if it was because of my Saturn return or if it was because I was well and truly sort of heading into my thirties, but I just didn't like who I was."

Adele wanted to be settled and happy, in a home full of loving, organized chaos. She never really felt that, or at least she never felt truly present in it. "It made me really sad," she recalls. "Then having so many people that I don't know know that I didn't make that work ... it fucking devastated me. I was embarrassed. No one made me feel embarrassed, but you feel like you didn't do a good job."

Adele had already started writing the album everyone was waiting for. She began work on 30 in early 2019 and had it completely written by early 2020, though the pandemic would have something to say about the eventual release date. Sure, it's an album about "divorce, babe," as she stated recently in her first-ever Instagram Live. But it's not the collection of scorched-earth power ballads everyone may have been expecting.

Instead, Adele wrote an open letter to Angelo, in hopes that one day he'll hear the album and really, truly understand who his mom was and how her life changed during this time. The only song specifically about her marriage is " Easy on Me," the gorgeous, very typically Adele first single. Across 30, Adele assesses the most important relationship of her life: the one with herself. Saturn returns are periods of major upheaval at the turn of one's thirties, and Adele just went through hers, coming out on the other side of a turbulent period ready to reckon with who she is and what she wants, even if it meant upending her own life.

She embarked on a spiritual journey, her own Eat, Pray, Love, if you will. It's the kind of thing the acerbic Brit might once have rolled her eyes at. It was exactly what she needed.

The Good Friday announcement sent Adele off on an intense few weeks of bed-bound anxiety. She was spending more nights on her own now that she and Konecki shared custody of Angelo. It was the most time she had ever spent away from her son.

But when she celebrated her 31st birthday with friends in May 2019, eating a home-cooked dinner and watching a movie, something clicked. "I remember going upstairs, and doing my face, and getting into bed," she says. Her birthday fell a few weeks after that depressing Easter weekend. "I felt quite hopeful," she says. "It was the first time I felt I'd had a really nice evening and I was OK being in the house and going to bed on my own. I was not excited, but I was looking forward to the next day."

The next day, she woke up to the California sun pouring through her curtains and "saw this tsunami of emotions" coming toward her. She thought that maybe she would try to be busy. Instead, she stayed in bed and started watching The Sopranos.

"I was like, 'This is going to be really fucking up-and-down,'" she says. And it was. But after the great birthday and rough comedown of a morning after, she decided to spend 2019 trying new things. She took recommendations from anyone - her lifelong London crew, industry allies, other moms at Angelo's school, even her eyelash girl. She entered her "sound bath era" and began hiking regularly. That July, she climbed a mountain in Idaho with friends, where they wrote their intentions and buried them in the dirt. She gave up drinking for about six months, tired of the constant "hangxiety."

"Anything that could soothe my anxiety, I threw myself in headfirst," she explains. She traveled "anywhere where there's meant to be brilliant energy." Jamaica, Greece, even a desert in Arizona, where she had done a similar intention-setting ritual. Adele's diet and body were changing, too. She had found out she's allergic to most forms of gluten when she moved to Los Angeles three years earlier, and later learned that a symptom of gluten sensitivity is feeling depressed. "So, I was like, 'Oh, great. Thanks, guys. Could have had a really fun twenties.' "

She got a bit addicted to the gym; it was another place where she didn't feel anxious. She was learning she was stronger than she thought and healing parts of her body, like the back that had given her trouble for years. She also learned she is surprisingly athletic. "If I can transform my strength and my body like this, surely I can do it to my emotions and to my brain and to my inner well-being," she surmised. "That was what drove me. It just coincided with all of the emotional work that I was doing with myself as a visual for it, basically."

All the while, she was writing. Most of her new songs were penned during a trip to London that summer. The producers and songwriters Greg Kurstin, Tobias Jesso Jr., Max Martin, and Shellback all returned after contributing to 25. New to the squad was Inflo, a North London producer who helped her get back to some of her writing roots.

"He really taught me to chill out," she explains. After having Angelo, she'd become a bit of a "control freak," which showed when she was making 25. It was more polished than 19 and 21, albums on which she was "just throwing everything at the wall." Inflo made her take a closer listen to some of her favorite albums - Donny Hathaway, the Carpenters, Al Green, Marvin Gaye. Their albums sound perfect because they technically aren't. "He was like, 'If you really listen, this is a mess. If you really listen, people are playing the wrong notes. They're coming in at the wrong time. It's all about the energy and the atmosphere that that creates. Why would you want anyone to do another take if you've just got the most perfect take that there is?' "

Their time in the studio would begin with a "six-hour therapy session," Adele says, when the pair would unpack what she was going through at the moment and then spend two or three days pulling out a song that cut to the heart of her emotional tsunami.

The album's track list is almost a chronological chain of events. It begins with a Judy Garland homage titled "Strangers by Nature," which opens with Adele "taking flowers to the cemetery of my heart" and wondering if she'll ever learn "to nurture what I've done." She made that one with Ludwig Göransson, the Oscar-winning Swedish composer who worked on Black Panther and with Childish Gambino (whom, by the way, Adele's been into for "donkey's years").

"I met Göransson at a party, and I was like, 'He's definitely European, that guy,' " she recalls. As a Brit in L.A., she finds herself seeking out other Europeans because of their often similar dry sense of humor.

They worked on "Strangers" after she had watched the Renée Zellweger-led Garland biopic, Judy, and wondered why no one wrote songs like that anymore. She calls the track her Death Becomes Her moment, alluding to the camp classic starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as two vengeful, youth-obsessed frenemies. Through "Strangers," Adele acknowledges being a bit of a "hot mess."

The song, short and whimsical, is so unlike anything she's done before that she almost thought about giving it to someone else to sing or sample. "You know in the old movies when someone's having a flashback or a memory to something else, and it's almost like they'll shoot a river or a pond and the water goes all ripply?" she asks. "It reminds me of that."

On "My Little Love," Adele sings an R&B lullaby to Angelo. She admits that "Mama's got a lot to learn" and that she's just barely holding on. Strikingly, it includes voice memos of Angelo asking tough questions she tries her best to answer. "I love your dad because he gave you to me," she says to him during bedtime conversations she'd begun to record in a period of severe anxiety. "It was unbearable," she explains now, "and so if I started getting anxious about something I might or might not have said, I could just listen back to this and be like, 'OK, I'm fine.'"

Adele has started to wonder about society's expectations for mothers, how they're always just moms while dads can be many things at once. Much of that is what reinforced her feelings of failing Angelo after leaving Konecki. "I might not have been emotionally there all the time, but I never wasn't there for him," she says, defending herself against her own fears. "My Little Love" - and, really, all of 30 - is about showing Angelo who his mother really is: a layered and complicated woman with an identity outside of their relationship, who's struggled and cried and hurt.

"He needs to know everyone goes through it," she continues. So far, and as heard on the voice memos, he is quite the understanding nine-year-old. "He's a Libra, so he is, like, 'Chill. It's fine, Mama. Just chill out.' "

In February 2020, Adele's best friend Laura invited Adele to come to her wedding. "I'd been so sad and reclusive," Adele says. "She was like, 'Listen, I need you to show up for me. I need you to come and run the party.' "

Since becoming famous, Adele often felt she had to skip things like weddings and birthday parties for her friends. She worried her presence would cause paparazzi disruptions for the guests or invasions of her own privacy. It's not like she could ask to have all the phones removed from someone else's big day. "I took it to an incredibly isolating level," she says.

But in the process of regaining herself outside of her marriage, Adele began showing up for friends like Laura. And in showing up, she managed to leak news of her own album. A couple of glasses of wine in, she took the stage at Laura's wedding to announce that her fourth LP would arrive in September 2020, a date that would of course slide back, thanks to a worldwide pandemic. "[Laura] was like, 'I was not expecting you to really run it like that,' " she says.

Fast-forward to this September, a full year after the original release date. Adele is enjoying a poke bowl in a Burbank rehearsal space and relishing a different kind of tweetstorm than the one she witnessed after her separation announcement. Her name had been trending after a radio host spread a rumor that she was about to drop her album imminently. A fake track list started to spread, including imaginary duets with Beyoncé and Ariana Grande. Adele isn't active online when she's not promoting an album or tour, but she is a "full-blown millennial." Meaning she's an NSA-level online sleuth.

"I know how to trace something online, like no one's business, back to the original source or leak, more than anyone on my team," she claims. She has a "finsta" - fake Instagram - she uses to check out cat and interior-design content, and a fake Twitter for checking on what's come out about her. She's been keeping tabs on information leaking about the real 30, free from any duets outside of a deluxe-edition version of "Easy on Me" featuring Chris Stapleton.

Adele pulls out her phone to find her favorite Tweet from the fervor over the fake album announcement. She searches the user @keyon, whose display name is "HOOD VOGUE is tired of poverty." He called bullshit on the information quickly, noting that Adele famously does not do features. "He is so funny. I was like, 'See, that's a fan,' " she says, scrolling through her phone. "If anything's blowing up on Twitter, I always go straight to that account because I know he'll either be like, 'Oh, this could be real,' or he's like, 'This is fake.' "

A couple of hours after we part ways, she'll forward another tweet to me, with her name in bold from the search she pulled up on Twitter. "Can someone wake Adele up and tell her she's coming Friday I don't think she knows," it reads, a sly reference to the fact that maybe, just maybe, the internet sleuths have it wrong and 30 is not, in fact, coming out that week.

The radio person wasn't totally off about something coming. That Friday, projections and billboards would pop up across the world with just the number 30 on them. Following the confirmation of new music a few days later, her album rollout snowballed from there. Soon, the actual, final date was announced: Nov. 19.

She could delay the album only so long. "If it wasn't coming out now, I think I probably would never put it out," she admits. Given the very specific point of her life she's singing about, she reckoned with the fact that an album has as much of a shelf life for the artist as it does for the audience. "I know I would've changed my mind and been like, 'It's moved on. Let's start the next album.' And I couldn't do that to this album. I feel like it deserves to come out.

"I had that conversation with Drake because he kept having to push his album back," she adds, referring to his Certified Lover Boy. "Suddenly he just announced that it was out and was like, 'I feel like I've been working on it for so long because I've been sitting on it.' I feel a bit like that."

Albums, tours, and movies have been scheduled and rescheduled across the industry in an ongoing search for when things will feel "normal." But like Adele and Drake, many have concluded that that time may not come for a long while. "No one wants to remember this period of time," she says. "Obviously, it's way better than last year, but the day my album comes out, someone's loved one will have died from Covid. For them, it's going to be a reminder every time they hear 'Easy on Me' on the radio."

The week 30 was announced, Adele gathered her band in Burbank to start going over songs old and new. It had been years since they were together, so they celebrated their reunion that week with a game of rounders (a kind of British children's baseball) at the Rose Bowl with a catered In-N-Out lunch. The band wore matching shirts, and Adele's goldendoodle puppies, Freddie and Bob, ran around the field. In a stirring battle of Americans versus Brits (and Australians), the Americans (with help from one athletically challenged journalist) won by a hair, even though we had no idea how to play the game.

In October, the crew filmed two live specials, one for CBS stateside and the other for ITV in the U.K. They'll prep again next year for a few big shows, including two in Hyde Park in London. For now, don't expect a marathon tour like the one Adele embarked on for 25. "It's too unpredictable, with all the rules and stuff," she says. "I don't want anyone coming to my show scared. And I don't want to get Covid, either." She shoots down the rumors of a Las Vegas residency, which she hasn't signed up to do "because there's fucking nothing available."

In rehearsal, Adele and her band test out the upcoming single "I Drink Wine," a standout from 30 that's already gone viral on Twitter, based off the name alone. It's a song about shedding one's ego, complete with a bit of a Seventies Elton John and Bernie Taupin flair. "I took everything so personally at that period of time in my life," she explains, "so the lyric 'I hope I learn to get over myself' is like [me saying] 'Once I've done that, then maybe I can let you love me.' "

The song is conversational, with Adele pulling a "Barry Manilow trick," where every chorus is sung differently. She put on different characters while recording the background vocals, too, to give it a sarcastic Sixties vibe (also present on the cheeky "Cry Your Heart Out" and "Love Is a Game"). "It made it less intimidating," she continues, "because some of the things I'm talking about really hit home for a lot of people."

It's hard to date when you're Adele. After her divorce, she was back on the market for the first time in nearly a decade, years of which were spent becoming one of the bestselling artists of all time. She's jealous of her friends who are on apps. L.A. never really felt conducive to finding love in the limited ways she could seek it out. "Everyone is someone or everyone wants to be someone," she says. "I've been so lucky that no one I've been with has ever sold a story on me. I feel like that could really be a possibility."

She wrote the 30 track "Can I Get It" about wanting to be in a real relationship instead of one that would devolve into casual sex, which seemed to be the only thing the Los Angeles dating pool was good for. "I lasted five seconds [dating here]," she jokes. The song "Oh My God" explores wanting to put herself out there but having trouble doing so as a superstar.

Her friends tried to set her up with people they knew, but she hated that, too. "You can't set me up on a fucking blind date! I'm like, 'How's that going to work?' There'll be paparazzi outside and someone will call [gossip site] Deuxmoi, or whatever it's fucking called! It ain't happening."

She was able to find love in private. There are a few songs on the album about the first relationship after her separation. The Erroll Garner-sampling "All Night Parking" is an ode to the intoxicating feeling of falling for someone new. "When I'm out at a party/I'm just excited to get home/And dream about you/All night long," she sings. Unfortunately, the romance was long-distance and doomed from the start. "[It] was a great learning curve and nice to feel loved, but it was never going to work," she admits.

The track immediately after "All Night Parking," titled "Woman Like Me," jumps toward the end of the courtship. A diss song through and through, it finds Adele chiding her ex for being complacent, lazy, and insecure, wasting the potential of their relationship. She delivers the message clearly and calmly, less pissed off than completely over the situation. "Even though I'm directing all the things I'm saying at someone else, they're also things I've learned on this journey," she explains. "The storyline of what I'm saying, I wouldn't have been able to write before because it was something that I was experiencing myself." (Some fans have wondered whether any songs on 30 are about British grime star Skepta, but Adele was already done with the album before rumors of their romance even surfaced.)

When you're an A-lister, dates tend to be sterile - NDAs, hiring out the whole restaurant. Still, she's recently found ease, stability, and security with boyfriend Rich Paul, an agent for prominent athletes like LeBron James. Paul and Adele met on a dance floor at a mutual friend's birthday party years ago. She doesn't remember which song they danced to, but she assumes it was something by her close friend Drake. Mostly because the DJ was playing too much Drake that night: "I was like, 'You should play something else. I love Drake. But you should play something else.' "

It was, in fact, Deuxmoi that broke the news of their relationship, telling the world before she was even able to tell the people in her life. "I didn't really tell many of my friends at the beginning because I wanted to keep it to myself," she admits. The first photos of them were at a discount mall. "None of them believed it!" For the record, she made a good sweep of the store that day. "Woo! I got loads in there," she exclaims, with that signature open-throated cackle.

Just as she's learned to date, Adele has also come to find her way in her adopted hometown. Until Adele had Angelo, she never liked Los Angeles. "It felt like I was only ever here for work. I felt like I never met anyone that was from here," she explains. She thought of L.A. as a ghost town. But when she was in town for the Oscars in 2013, the year she won a statue for her James Bond song, "Skyfall," Adele, Konecki, and an infant Angelo rented a house and she fell in love. "That sun every morning," Adele says. "[You can] always see the sky because it's not high-rises here."

The family bought a house during the American leg of her tour, settling down in a celebrity-filled, gated enclave in Beverly Hills. The home is cozy and kind, with plush red sofas and sage-green cabinets. There's a huge room dedicated to toys and instruments for her son, though he's more into video games and TikTok lately. Eventually, they bought two more houses in the same area, including one across the street, where Konecki now lives. "We do normal, normal things on the weekends," Adele says of their life. "I'll take him to the parties, all of that. We'll do school drop-off."

As Angelo started attending school, Adele began befriending the other moms. In her neighborhood, she finally caved and made industry friends, like her neighbors Nicole Richie and Jennifer Lawrence, a practice she had consciously avoided for years. "They humanized me because I had avoided talking to anyone that was ever famous in any capacity, because I was like, 'Well, I'm not famous.' I'm very British like that," she explains. "We never spoke about work, which was amazing, because most of the time when I catch up with someone, they want to know all about my work, and I'm like, 'I don't want to talk about that. Can we talk about something else? I'm knackered.' "

Adele has "chilled out" in Los Angeles, with her core group of friends helping her find a life that feels both private and full. In fact, she has come to love the city so much that she even got it tattooed on her arm, the L.A. skyline in the middle of a ringed planet, to represent the Saturn return she experienced while living there.

Adele still had one more stop on her journey of personal reckoning. It was back in the U.K., where her father was losing an eight-year battle with cancer.

Adele's parents split when she was three. Following the separation and a string of other losses, her father, Mark Evans, began to slip deeper into alcoholism and became estranged from his young daughter. Their relationship remained tense as her fame ballooned.

When Evans' cancer returned earlier this year, Adele wasn't sure whether she should go to see him. She credits her friend India with persuading her to do so. It turned out her dad was receptive to having an honest conversation about their relationship and the pain she's felt her entire life. She even played Evans the new songs. In fact, he was the first person to hear them.

Their final conversation set her free from a lifetime of pain, feelings of abandonment, and being unloved, set off by a seeming lack of effort on his part. "I don't think I understood the true deepness of how I felt about my dad until we spoke," she says.

There were parts of her father that she had never quite understood and was now ready to forgive. The same types of things she hopes to explain to Angelo about herself. "I think I've never been fully in any of my relationships," she reflects, with Konecki as the closest exception. "I always had this fear from a really young age that you're going to leave me anyway, so I'm going to leave or I'm not going to invest myself in anything."

When Evans died in May, she found herself having a "physical reaction," comparing the experience to the scene in The Green Mile where illnesses are sucked out of people and spat out. "It was like I let out one wail and something left," Adele explains. "I've felt so calm ever since then. It really did set little me free."

A week later, she reconnected with Paul and embarked on the most "incredible, openhearted, and easiest" relationship she's ever been in. A relationship she finally felt comfortable enough to tell the world about, with a man she was proud to introduce to her son.

After a four-album journey, a woman has found new love, and it turned out to be as much with another person as it was with herself. "I'm not frightened of loneliness anymore," she says.

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How Adele turned heartache over divorce into her most honest album yet

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Adele reunited with former teacher and childhood inspiration (2021)

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Adele reunited with former teacher and childhood inspiration (2021)

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On the night of 'An Audience With Adele', Adele is reunited with her favourite school teacher. She cries whilst referring to her as "miss" in the crowds presence. The moment captures raw emotion and displays Adele's genuine persona.

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Adele reunited with former teacher and childhood inspiration and Alan Carr takes to the stage | ITV

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In a heart breaking video uploaded to Instagram just days before her tour, Adele announces a last minute delay. Her hand is in her head for the entirety of the video as she struggles for words through the tears. "I'm so upset and I'm really embarrassed" she cries. "I'm really, really sorry, I'm really sorry". She constructs a genuine star image here through these gestures. It is clearly something that has made her distressed and her devastation stems from the fact she knows she has let her fans down.

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Adele on Instagram: "All dates will be rescheduled
More info coming soon
💔"

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3M likes, 104K comments - adele on January 20, 2022: "All dates will be rescheduled
More info coming soon
💔"

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A Body Transformation that shocked the world (2020)

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A Body Transformation that shocked the world (2020)

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Adele posted a surprising image in 2020 showcasing her dramatic weight loss. At this point in her life, her stardom begins to become characterised by her physical appearance.

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Thank you for the birthday love. I hope you’re all staying safe and sane during this crazy time...

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'To Be Loved' - Uploaded to Instagram days before release

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'To Be Loved' - Uploaded to Instagram days before release

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48 hours before the release of her newest album '30', Adele uploaded this authentic video of her singing her most powerful song from the track list. She sits on her sofa in her living room, without makeup, and sings to herself as if nobody is watching. Whilst the video is completely natural, and presents Adele with an extremely genuine star image, it could be argued it is used as a marketing strategy to build excitement for the new album.

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4M likes, 95K comments - adele on November 17, 2021: "To Be Loved"

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Adele shares a fan made meme and posts it on her Instagram feeds, in spite of the fact she looks miserable in the picture of the left. This shows she'd prefer to find the humour in a situation instead of worrying about her public and star image.

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2M likes, 24K comments - adele on May 1, 2019

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Adele on the Front Cover of the 'Rolling Stone' Magazine (2011)

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Adele on the Front Cover of the 'Rolling Stone' Magazine (2011)

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Described as a ‘Heartbreak Superstar’. Her music and image shapes her audiences perception of her.

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Adele Opens Up About Her Inspirations, Looks and Stage Fright

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Adele Opens Up About Her Inspirations, Looks and Stage Fright

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Taken from the April 28, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone, Adele opens up about her challenging childhood, common anxiety attacks, and her first heartbreak, moments that challenge conventions of the typical star. Additionally, she discusses her weight and that she isn't affected by it: "I don’t make music for eyes, I make music for ears.” She takes her music seriously and she doesn't need to be sexualised by the media to achieve stardom.

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"Aw, Louis!" Adele groans. "Don't roll in the shit!" It ' s Saturday, around 2 p.m., and she's zipping through a small park along Alster Lake in Hamburg, Germany, yanking the leash of her constant companion, a two-year-old wiener dachshund, Louis Armstrong.

It's only a few days into Adele 's European tour, but she's a bit out of sorts. We have descended from the penthouse bar of her hotel, where she drank two mini carafes of red wine. Now she's feeling "fluffy." "It's gone straight to my head!" she says. She's not wearing any makeup, and her dirty-blond hair is pulled back in a messy knot.

In a year of sex bombs and art projects on the pop charts, the biggest surprise hit of 2011 is a breakup LP that could have been recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama - the work of an earthy, full-figured 22-year-old whose go-to outfits are billowy turtleneck sweaters. (She's wearing a black one today, which she calls "my shield, my comfort," along with black leggings and leopard-print ballet flats.)

Adele's second album, 21, debuted at Number One in the U.K. and U.S., and has sold 3.5 million overall, a development she calls "pretty intense." She recently started smoking again - she claims she's back to only seven cigarettes a day, but over a few hours, she smokes at least that.

To compound matters this week, her fathis, Mark Evans - a recovering alcoholic who left Adele's mother and her when she was three - sold a story to the U.K. tabloid The Sun, telling them that he felt guilty about not being there for Adele when she was growing up. Adele's eyes narrow when she talks about the story. "I never knew my dad," she says. "He has no fuckin' right to talk about me." The day after her dad's story, another one appeared, this time about Adele's childhood; the reporter had ambushed her grandmother at a bus stop for an interview. "That's when I started smoking again," Adele says.

Adele has one of the great voices of the past few years - a mix of soul power, tender sweetness and scary emotional transparency. Songs like "Someone Like You" - in which she says goodbye to an ex-boyfriend who has married - are messy, conflicted, sometimes explosive. "All of her songs are based on real events and real people," says her bassist, Sam Dixon. "It can be hard for her to sing them; that's happened a few times now." At the Brit Awards in February, she was close to tears at the end of her performance of "Someone" and had to turn away from the cameras. "It's not a pose or a stance," says Rick Rubin, who produced four of 21 's songs. "When you hear someone bare their soul, it resonates."

In person, Adele is just as unguarded. Walking through the park, she tells of once going onstage with "a tampon on my thumb. It was awful!" She says it was to cover up a broken nail. ("You make it hollow and put it on your finger. I do it all the time.") She talks fast, uses different voices, tells filthy jokes onstage ("What do you call a blonde standing on her head? A brunette with bad breath.") She cops to signing up for an Internet dating service last year. "I was drunk, upset and listening to Sinéad O'Connor's 'Nothing Compares 2 U.'" (She quit after trying it once.)

She loves shock rappers Odd Future. "They're refreshing," she says, but "my fans weren't happy when I posted their video on my blog." (Sample line: "I'll stab Bruno Mars in his goddamn esophagus.") Lil' Kim once heard a rap of hers:."She said I was nasty!"

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born in Tottenham, a north London district with some of the highest unemployment in the U.K. Her mother, Penny, was in her teens; she worked as a masseuse, a furniture-maker and an office administrator, and they moved a lot, often living in government-subsidized housing. Adele "loved moving," she claims. "I think that's why I can't stay in one place now. I don't think of my childhood like, 'Oh, I went to 10 different schools.' My mum always made it fun."

Her mother is still her closest friend, and current roommate. Adele credits her with turning her on to Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill and Alicia Keys - she calls The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Songs in A Minor "life-defining." The other big influence was Etta James, whose music she discovered in the bargain bin of a record store. "She was the first time a voice made me stop what I was doing and sit down and listen. It took over my mind and body."

As a child, Adele loved singing and playing guitar and clarinet; by 14, she was impressive enough to successfully audition for London's BRIT School, a public performing-arts high school that artists such as Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis and Kate Nash also attended. "It was like Fame," she says. "There were kids doing pirouettes in the fuckin' hallway and doing mime and having sing-offs in the foyer." Her classmate and current guitarist, Ben Thomas, says Adele never seemed driven to get into the music business. "There were some people at school who really pushed hard," Thomas says. "You could tell they really wanted it. Adele never really had that. But she was a great performer and everyone would be completely silent and in awe when she performed."

She almost got kicked out because she had issues with punctuality. "I'd turn up to school four hours late," she says. "I was sleeping. I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't bunking, I just couldn't wake up." One, day, a group of teachers selected 20 of the most promising students to go on a trip to Devon to perform at a festival, and Adele overslept. The moment she opened her eyes and realized she was too late, she says, "My heart exploded in my chest. It was pretty horrible. I almost did get kicked out of the school for that. But now I'm always on time, and if I'm late it's always someone else's fault."

In her last year at BRIT, a friend posted on MySpace a three-song demo that Adele had recorded for a class. Several labels e-mailed, asking to meet her. She was unimpressed. "I thought it was some dirty Internet pervert," she says. "I saw there were e-mails from Island and XL, but I'd never heard of them so I didn't call them back." Finally, at the urging of her mother, she met with an A&R guy from XL - the indie-label home of M.I.A. - who signed her nearly on the spot.

Adele's 2008 debut, 19, was a modest success in America - it debuted at Number 56 on the album chart and then dropped - until she landed a spot performing on Saturday Night Live, in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign, on the night that Sarah Palin appeared on the show. "I was sitting in my dressing room having my makeup done," she says, "and I thought, 'If you nail this, this could be one of those moments in a career.'" More than 14 million people watched as Adele performed "Chasing Pavements" and "Cold Shoulder." "When we did the performance on SNL, we were at Number 40 on iTunes," says her manager, Jonathan Dickins. "The following morning, we were at Number Eight. When I got off the plane in London, we were at Number One." She would go on to win Grammys for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

It was around this time that she met the guy who would become the inspiration for 21. He was 10 years older than her, and he got her interested in traveling, reading fiction like Zadie Smith's White Teeth and writing poetry. "He made me an adult. He put me on the road that I'm traveling on," Adele says. "Most of my life was my career, but I had this little side project that was us. And it made me feel really normal again, which is just what I needed. Because I was becoming a bit doo-lally - a bit fuckin' crazy."

They lived together for almost a year at her place in London before things started to fizzle. "It just stopped being fun," she says. He was artistic, "but not romantic. He never took me to Italy. I took him to Italy." She laughs. "I booked it all and took us to a nice hotel in Milan."

Toward the end, "We'd just bicker over a cup of tea or the fact that my lighter wasn't working." Her friends were happy to see him go. "They all thought he was shitty," she says. "All my friends, everyone I worked with, no one liked him, because I acted different when I was around him."

The morning after things officially ended, she was in the studio, sobbing while making "Rolling in the Deep." Paul Edgeworth, who produced that song, says, "She was obviously quite fragile and very open about what had happened. But she had fire in her belly." Midway through the album, she found out her ex was engaged. "I was absolutely devastated." She hasn't seen anyone since it ended. "I'm not ready to," she says softly. "I think I'm a bit flimsy right now. I'm not in love with him, but I love him still, ya know?"

"I have the shakes," says Adele. It's 7:30 p.m. and she's in the basement dressing room of a 1,200-capacity club near Hamburg's red-light district, wearing the same black turtle-neck sweater. She's been drinking coffee with Louis on her lap and smoking another cigarette. As always, she's got some stage fright. "I'm scared of audiences," she says. "I get shitty scared. One show in Amsterdam, I was so nervous I escaped out the fire exit. I've thrown up a couple of times. Once in Brussels, I projectile-vomited on someone. I just gotta bear it. But I don't like touring. I have anxiety attacks a lot."

How does she get herself onstage? "I just think that nothing's ever gone horrifically wrong," she says. "Also, when I get nervous, I try to bust jokes. It does work. I chat a lot of fucking shit, though." For most people who get stage fright, the nerves go away once the show starts, but for Adele, things get worse. "My nerves don't really settle until I'm offstage," she says. "I mean, the thought of someone spending $20 to come and see me and saying 'Oh, I prefer the record and she's completely shattered the illusion' really upsets me. It's such a big deal that people come give me their time."

She also has an alter ego she uses to pump herself up, called Sasha Carter - a composite of Beyoncé's Sasha Fierce and June Carter. "I was about to meet Beyoncé," she says, "and I had a full-blown anxiety attack. Then she popped in looking gorgeous, and said, 'You're amazing! When I listen to you I feel like I'm listening to God.' Can you believe she said that?" Later, "I went out on the balcony crying hysterically, and I said, 'What would Sasha Fierce do?' That's when Sasha Carter was born."

One thing that Adele says she isn't anxious about is her weight. It's fluctuated throughout her life, but she says she doesn't diet or work out. "My life is full of drama, and I don't have time to worry about something as petty as what I look like," she says. "I don't like going to the gym. I like eating fine foods and drinking nice wine. Even if I had a really good figure, I don't think I'd get my tits and ass out for no one. I love seeing Lady Gaga's boobs and bum. I love seeing Katy Perry's boobs and bum. Love it. But that's not what my music is about. I don't make music for eyes, I make music for ears."

She leans down to Louis and holds out a treat. "Lady Gaga!" she commands. "Put your paws up!" He sits up on his legs with his paws up. The topic turns to Mumford & Sons, whom she loves. "They're closer to how I feel about Etta James than anyone," she says. "Such articulate voices."

At 8:40 p.m., Adele stubs out her cigarette and stops playing with Louis, stands on the edge of the stage and begins singing "Hometown Glory," a gentle love letter to London from 19. The audience can hear but not see her. Soon she takes her place on the wooden stool at center stage. With English-language audiences, Adele can be "Bette Midler funny," but tonight she focuses on the songs, sometimes singing with a hand in the pocket of her jumper. She runs through songs from both her albums and a cover, "If It Hadn't Been for Love," by a Nashville band called the Steel-drivers. She introduces it by saying, "It's a song about shooting your wife. And I feel like shooting my ex."

In between songs, Adele tells the crowd, "My dog is on tour with me. He's a dachshund. I have a German dog! He loves it here. He's in the homeland!" There's a sprinkling of laughs in the audience. She closes with a loud, powerful, stomping "Rolling in the Deep," and even though she walks off and the lights come on and someone else's music starts playing from the house speakers, the crowd just stands there. They cheer, clap and chant her name, but she's done. "Always leave them wanting more," she says in the dressing room, cigarette in hand, wine nearby, Louis on her lap. "That was an emotional show!"

With the show behind her, Adele is finally at ease. She jokes about what would happen if she were in a happy relationship. "No music!" she says. "My fans will be like, 'Babe! Please! Get divorced!'"

She laughs. "Don't worry. My bubble always fuckin' bursts."
This story is from the April 28, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

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Adele Opens Up About Her Inspirations, Looks and Stage Fright

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Adele, pop's biggest voice of 2011, runs on cigarettes, red wine and high-octane heartbreak. Cover story profile by Touré.

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Adele Wins Album Of The Year | Acceptance Speech | 59th GRAMMYs (2017)

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Adele Wins Album Of The Year | Acceptance Speech | 59th GRAMMYs (2017)

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Adele dedicates the majority of her speech to Beyoncé, telling her "all us artists here, we fucking adore you". She trembles as she speaks and swears live on the show. She mirrors her star image and genuinity even in the most professional circumstances.

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Adele Wins Album Of The Year | Acceptance Speech | 59th GRAMMYs

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Here, Adele is pranked by a woman pretending to be an interviewer who struggles with English, consequently asking Adele questions that are far from making sense. Adele's replies are comedic; she openly laughs at the interviewer whilst also making an effort to answer the questions asked. Her level of authenticity is reflected here. From a young age, she has always been herself, despite awkward and untimely situations.

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Adele stops show to help distressed fan in Las Vegas (2023)

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Adele stops show to help distressed fan in Las Vegas (2023)

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Adele stops her performance in the middle of a song to defend a young fan for standing up at her show. She asks "can you leave him alone please?" to security in addition to other fans in the arena. "Here's here to have fun, alright, you're all here to have fun" she adds. She illustrates authenticity here by achieving a heroic persona.

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Adele stops show to help distressed fan in Las Vegas

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Adele does everything Ellen tells her to do, in spite of the fact it may harm her star image. This implies she isn't concerned what the public think of her.

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“I mean it’s food, just coz I’ve lost weight I know everything there is to know about food, I eat so much food still.”

Regardless of her weight loss, Adele confidently talks about her diet in a humours manner with no shame, therefore opposing any perceived star-quality that arose immediately after her transformation.

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Adele Eats Spotted Dick, Cockles & 10 Other British Dishes | British Vogue

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This interview with Heart radio was recorded just five days after Adele's comeback single "Easy On Me" was released. She says "I’m ready to be famous again, just for a little while”. In spite of the trauma she's encountered whilst being away from the public eye, she preserves her sense of realism and keeps humour at the forefront of her star image.

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Interview with Adele - "The bigger your career gets, the smaller your life gets" | Skavlan (2015)

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"The bigger your career gets, the smaller your life gets"

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"The bigger your career gets, the smaller your life gets"

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In this interview, Adele's shows her sincerity by openly discussing drinking, sex, and her insecurities. She additionally embodies a sense of normality, stating "I don't know how I'm gonna write records that people can relate to and enjoy if I'm living some mad life". She acknowledges that her lifestyle determines her music and she wishes to continue this pattern.

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Interview with Adele - "The bigger your career gets, the smaller your life gets" | SVT/NRK/Skavlan

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Adele tells fan to stop filming gig and enjoy it in real life (2016)

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Adele tells fan to stop filming gig and enjoy it in real life (2016)

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Adele stops her show to ask a fan: “could you stop filming me with that video camera? Because I’m really here in real life, you can enjoy it in real life rather than through your camera.”

Adele added: “This isn’t a DVD, this is a real show.” She said she would like those in the crowd to enjoy it “because there’s lots of people outside that couldn’t come in”.

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Singer Adele wants concertgoers to look at her with their own eyes instead of through a camera lens.

A video posted by a fan on Twitter shows the 28-year-old British singer singling out a woman at a concert, asking her: "Could you stop filming me with that video camera? Because I'm really here in real life, you can enjoy it in real life rather than through your camera."

Adele added: "This isn't a DVD, this is a real show." She said she would like those in the crowd to enjoy it "because there's lots of people outside that couldn't come in". She then rolled her eyes and turned around.

ABC News reported that the video was taken on Sunday night at Adele's show in Verona, Italy.

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Adele tells fan to stop filming gig and enjoy it in real life

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Video reportedly taken during concert in Verona, Italy, shows singer telling audience member 'this isn't a DVD, this is a real show'

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Adele says some fans ‘felt very betrayed’ by her weight loss

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Adele says some fans ‘felt very betrayed’ by her weight loss

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As a result of Adele's weight loss, fans began to feel 'betrayed' because she kept her progress and transformation private as opposed to public. Because she had built a great level of trust with her fans and shared so much of her personal life with them, consequences emerged when she behaved privately.

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 ‘It’s not my job’ to make fans feel better about my weight loss 

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 ‘It’s not my job’ to make fans feel better about my weight loss 

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Despite the backlash, Adele remains inattentive, expressing “my body has been objectified my entire career.” Her self-awareness and acknowledgement that she will always be criticised in her career enhances her individual star image.

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She won't be thin-shamed.

Adele admitted she is not "fazed" by fan backlash over her remarkable physical transformation, which saw the UK superstar morph into a svelte, self-proclaimed "athlete" who kills in the gym.

The 33-year-old "Rolling in the Deep" singer dropped the bombshell on Oprah Winfrey ahead of releasing her anticipated album "30."

When Winfrey, 67, probed Adele for a response to some fans feeling "betrayed" by her weight loss, the long-time body positivity advocate didn't pull any punches.

"I feel bad if anyone feels horrible about themselves but that's not my job. I'm trying to sort my own life out," Adele - full name Adele Laurie Blue Adkins - told Winfrey of her metamorphosis during their "One Night Only" concert/interview combo special Sunday on CBS.

The 15-time Grammy winner revealed she shed "somewhere around" 100 pounds from 2017 to 2019 as she coped with "terrifying anxiety attacks" while ending her "life-saving" marriage to entrepreneur Simon Konecki, 47. The London native attributed her new look in large part to exercise, explaining that she was able to "deadlift" a whopping 170 pounds at her strongest.

"I'm actually an athlete, I'm not even boasting," the "Easy on Me" singer said, adding that she's also a "very good boxer" who packs a "left hook that could kill you."

Adele kills it during her "One Night Only" performance. "I was body positive then and I'm body positive now," the vocalist told Oprah. "It's not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies."

CBS

Adele also notably hired a personal trainer and allegedly (she has since denied reports) followed the sirtfood diet, a meal plan focusing on sirtuins, or proteins in your body that specialize in cellular health and metabolism, among other things.

Later on, the star was questioned by Winfrey about the backlash over her dramatic transformation, which saw many social media fans slam the excessive praise over her new body as harmful and fatphobic.

Adele responded that she was not shocked as "my body has been objectified my entire career."

"I was body positive then and I'm body positive now," the vocalist continued. "It's not my job to validate how people feel about their bodies."

Adele told Oprah that she was not shocked by the public backlash, as "my body has been objectified my entire career."

Joe Pugliese/CBS

Adele's weight loss apparently hasn't affected her voice, which she displayed Sunday to multiple standing ovations in "Adele One Night Only " - a CBS concert special pre-taped at LA's Griffith Observatory.

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Adele: 'It's not my job' to make fans feel better about my weight loss

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Adele admitted she is not "fazed" by fan backlash over her remarkable physical transformation into an "athlete" who killed in the gym: "I feel bad if anyone feels horrible about themselves but that's not my job. I'm trying to sort my own life out."

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Adele 30: Fans react to singer’s ‘powerful’ new album

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Adele 30: Fans react to singer’s ‘powerful’ new album

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Fan reactions to her latest album:

Her “best yet”

“Adele has hacked this music thing.”

“I gotta admit, I thought it was gonna be more of the same Adele, but it really does feel soo fresh and evolved and powerful.”

“Adele never misses”

"adele dropped, pass me a bottle"

"I’m not ready for it to end"

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The article published by My Horrid Parent summarises Adele's harmful childhood, her working-class background, and her alcoholic father who abandoned her.

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Part of Adele's childhood was spent in a socially deprived area in south London. Nonetheless it was here, in a run-down apartment above a discount store, that Adele wrote her early hits.

Adele was passionate about music from an early age. Her mother took on three jobs, freelance masseuse, furniture-maker and organiser for adult learning activities, so she could afford to send her to music classes most nights of the week.

Adele originally attended a local comprehensive school but it didn't suit her and she played truant. Luckily her musical talent was such that at thirteen she was awarded a place atthe renowned BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology. Her debut album, 19, on which she played piano, guitar and bass, made her a star.Her second album 21, sold an eye-opening 31 million copies worldwide and led to her winning multiple Grammys. Adele also received a songwriting Oscar for the James Bond track "Skyfall."

Adele is a big personality and has no time for fools. Professionally her unique ability to communicate intimate details of love and loss through her songs has no doubt been cathartic for her and any fan with similar experiences.

Personally she was silent about her own childhood. Her relationship with her father only became public knowledge in 2011 when he gave an interview to the Sun newspaper and admitted: "I was a rotten father at a time when she really needed me." He also talked about being an alcoholic.

He has subsequently claimed more than once their difficult past is behind them and they now get on well, but Adele has not confirmed this. Instead she made it clear that she fell out with him in 2012 when he insensitively commented that she struggled to find love because of her abandonment issues - an indication he didn't put her wish for privacy first.

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Someone like me: A definitive new biography reveals the abandonment, childhood trauma and teenage heartache that inspired Adele

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Someone like me: A definitive new biography reveals the abandonment, childhood trauma and teenage heartache that inspired Adele

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From the Mail Online, Adele's stardom was at risk in her teenage years, in which she was going through a time she referred to as her "ELC - early life crisis". During this time, she cancelled a handful of shows in the US to spend time with her first love. She confesses "I can’t believe I did that. It seems so ungrateful."

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She punched the boy who inspired her first hit, detested the father who deserted her and turned childhood trauma and teenage heartbreak into her signature tunes. The new Adele biography details the struggles that created a modern pop sensation

Adele had been dating her first boyfriend for three months when she discovered he had been cheating on her. She was 18, and it was the first proper relationship she had experienced. 'I would have died for him,' she admits. In return, he triggered an emotional turmoil she hadn't felt since her grandfather died seven years earlier.

The devastated young woman marched into the all-night West End bar where her boyfriend was having a drink, told him what she thought of him and, as she tells it herself, 'punched him in the face'. She was swiftly escorted from the premises.

As she made her escape down a wide and empty Oxford Street in the early hours of the morning, a line popped into her head. 'I got thrown out, and as I was running away, the phrase 'chasing pavements' came to me. I sang it into my phone.'

When she got home to her mother's flat in south London, she made straight for her room and her guitar, roughed out three chords, and one of her most famous songs was born.

Recently signed to a record deal but with only four original songs to her name, Adele was in need of inspiration. The 'rubbish boyfriend' and the mix of anger, regret and loss he provoked became the fire behind a creativity she had never known before. Breaking up, it seemed, was always the most memorable part of a relationship. Three weeks later, she had written nine new songs, and she was ready for her first album.

The millions who love her music know that sorrow and inspiration have gone hand in hand for Adele ever since. She sings about love and loss, of vulnerability and hurt, and of a sentimental yearning for the past. Songs such as Set Fire To The Rain, Someone Like You and Rolling In The Deep have mined her own relationships to create something with universal resonance.

But those close to Adele Adkins have long known she was an exceptionally sensitive girl, needing therapy at the age of 11 to help her cope with an even more profound loss.

At Glastonbury this summer, where she created a homely, profanity-riddled, mates-in-the-pub atmosphere on that great stage, she took a moment to recall her first heartbreak of all. 'This is for my grandad,' she announced, before singing Bob Dylan's Make You Feel My Love.

Her Welsh father, window cleaner Marc Evans, split from her London-born teenage mother, Penny, when Adele was a baby. He was often absent, missing most of her teenage years, re-emerging, after the success of her second album, to sell his story to a newspaper. Their relationship hasn't recovered.

But her father's parents, John and Rose Evans, supported Penny financially as their granddaughter grew up. Adele would spend her summers with her grandparents in the popular Welsh resort of Penarth, near Cardiff, and they doted on her.

When John died from bowel cancer in May 1999, aged 57, Adele was devastated. 'I painted him as this Jesus figure in my life,' she has said. 'I loved him so much - more than the world.' The 11-year-old Adele braved his funeral in Penarth, but in the weeks after, she didn't seem to be able to get over her sense of desolation. Her worried mother decided to seek professional help and took her to see a counsellor experienced in dealing with bereavement in children.

Adele needed time to work through her feelings. Her response to her grandfather's death perhaps goes some way to explain her heartfelt and intense response to the trauma of breaking up with people she loved - a mixture of anger and regret at being left, and a heightened sense of loss.

Seeking something positive from her unhappiness, Adele told her mother that she was going to be a heart surgeon. She revealed her ambition: 'I wanted to fix people's hearts.'

Although there was no great musical heritage in the Adkins family, Adele's home was always filled with music. Her mother smuggled her into the Brixton Academy in south London under her trench coat to watch The Beautiful South when she was four. 'It was amazing - my clearest memory of when I was little.'

Four years later, Adele fell in love with the Spice Girls and was transfixed by the then Geri Halliwell's fire and energy: 'I remember seeing Geri and being like, "F*** it, I'm going to do that. I want to be Ginger Spice."' She proved the point nearly 20 years later when she sang a spontaneous version [of Wannabe] with James Corden for his chat show's 'Carpool Karaoke' feature.

Later, her mother's boyfriend, a computer programmer named Simon, who later bought Adele her first grown-up guitar, brought Penny a copy of the ground-breaking album The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, the first solo album from the singer of The Fugees.

'I remember having the sleeve notes and reading every lyric and not understanding half of them and just thinking, "When am I going to be that passionate about something to write a record about it?"' says Adele. She already understood the anguish in certain love songs: 'I always loved the ones about horrible relationships. Those were the ones you could relate to and that always made you cry.'

Later, as she drifted through her teenage years, enthusiastically smoking with her friends in south London's Brockwell Park and frequently missing school, a friend of her mother's heard her singing one night and insisted that Adele should pursue it seriously. She didn't need much persuading. By then, she was well aware that music was the only career she wished to have.

All the same, Adele's reaction was forthright when it was first suggested she might apply to the Brit School for Performing Arts & Technology, a short train ride away in Selhurst, near Croydon. 'I'm not going there!' she bellowed. 'It's a f****** stage school. I can make it on my own.'

THE DAD WHO LET HER DOWN

She came around, and her fellow Brit students, who included future stars such as Jessie J, Kate Nash and Katy B, soon became used to seeing Adele in the corner playing her guitar in tracksuit bottoms.

'Adele was an absolute perfectionist,' remembers one of her classmates. 'She always had one thing on her mind: succeeding over anything else - over social life, over everything like that. That was her main focus.'

Before she left in May 2006, Adele entered her own Daydreamer - about an unrequited romance with an unidentified bisexual boy - into the school's annual songwriting competition.

The girl who would be announced at Glastonbury ten years later as the 'biggest star on the planet' came third.

Shortly afterwards, she was chosen to be one of the performers at The Best Of... show - the school's final, prestigious performance of the year, appearing in a black, baggy cardigan and clutching a mug of tea.

Her teacher Liz Penney has never forgotten it: 'I have been a teacher for many years and I don't say, "That was amazing" very often. But when she sang, you could hear a pin drop.'

One of Adele's favourite stories is that when opportunity came knocking, she thought it was an internet pervert. She was 17 when a top A&R man called Nick Huggett got in touch in early 2006. He had heard about her through one of his talent scouts and watched her three-song demo on Myspace. 'I heard a really amazing voice and I thought, "Wow, there's something special about this girl."'

Nick emailed her through the site to ask, 'Are you signed?'

Adele, when she tells it, recalls, 'I was like, "signed to what?" And he said, "Have you got a record deal?"'

He suggested they meet up at the offices of his record company, XL Recordings, in Ladbroke Grove. Adele knew nothing about them and was wary. She decided to take her guitarist friend Ben Thomas along in case her worst fears were realised. 'He's puny, Ben, looks like a dwarf, but I'd never heard of XL, so I thought I might be on my way to meet a perv or something.'

XL offered her a deal and found her a manager, Jonathan Dickins. At that time there wasn't a queue of men in suits with fat cheque books looking to sign her.

Adele became involved in a small scene around XL, which included artists such as Jamie T, Jack Peñate and Kate Nash. This new crowd were decidedly not from Tottenham or West Norwood, although they all seemed to sport a sort of Lily Allen Estuary accent - posh cockneys who didn't bother to say their Ts. Even Adele, who had genuine working-class roots, suddenly began to sound as if she ran a market stall in Albert Square.

Liz Penney was surprised when she first heard Adele being interviewed: 'I thought, "I don't remember her London accent being quite that strong." I'm from London and I always had the impression we had a similar sort of accent. I thought, "Blimey, why is she talking like that?"'

As Chasing Pavements hit number two in the charts and her fame began to grow, Adele chose not to 'out' her ex-boyfriend to the world, though her now notorious ex apparently demanded a cut of her royalties for inspiring the songs on her 19 album. 'He really thought he'd had some input into the creative process by being a p****,' says Adele. 'Finally, I said, "Well, you made my life hell, so I lived it and now I deserve it."'

Her own company, Melting Stone, was incorporated on April 4, 2008 and in its first year turned over £1.2 million, with a net profit of £562,000 - not bad for a 20-year-old from West Norwood. Adele is the sole shareholder, director and company secretary, and would exercise similar control as more companies were set up for her in the future. It was an early indication that behind the façade of an ordinary girl with very real emotions was a formidable and smart woman.

Her continued success saw her first conquer, then move to America. Now living in Los Angeles with son Angelo and Old Etonian partner Simon Konecki, and with a massive third album ringing in the world's ears and a blockbuster world tour approaching its conclusion in Arizona later this month, Adele's superstardom is assured.

With a rumoured £85 million fortune and a new £90 million Sony deal, she is arguably the best-loved performer in Britain today - and most of the world, for that matter.

Today Brockwell Park, where she used to smoke and sing with her friends, is full of young mothers with pushchairs, much like herself. Adele, who doesn't look like Adele when she's out and about in sweatpants and trainers, her hair fine and unkempt, her famous eyes hidden behind an oversized pair of her favourite sunglasses, could probably join them and not be recognised.

I couldn't sum her up any better than the young woman assistant in the Floral Hall flower shop in Norwood Road, where she used to buy a bunch or two for her mum.

'I love Adele,' she told me. 'She keeps it real.' e

'Adele', by Sean Smith, is published by HarperCollins on Nov 17, priced at £14.99. Offer price £11.24 (25 per cent discount) until November 27. Order at www.mailbookshop.co.uk, or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over £15

Adele was introduced to the man who would inspire her second album at a time when the hype surrounding her was almost out of control. He was ten years older, cultured and artistic, and they spent their time staying in, cooking and watching films or going out to low-key restaurants.

When a US TV crew came over to film her in London, they were amused to find Adele checking her phone every few minutes to see if her new boyfriend had replied to a text.

The cloud on the summer of love was that Adele was drinking too much - to the extent that it was becoming a problem. She had never been shy about admitting that she liked a glass or two. She didn't realise until later that her life was out of control for a while. 'That was kind of the basis of my relationship with this boy,' she admitted.

As the stress of her busy new life mounted, she cancelled a run of US shows to spend more time with him and told her manager and PR that she was switching off her BlackBerry and didn't want any emails, interview requests or texts. 'I couldn't bear to be without him, so I was like, "Well, OK, I'll just cancel my stuff then..." I can't believe I did that. It seems so ungrateful. We refer to that time as my ELC - early life crisis.'

Meanwhile, even as her stardom in the US threatened to eclipse her fame in the UK, the magic at home soon disappeared and she and her 'soulmate' spent their days bickering over nothing. They would argue about her lighter running out of fuel or not putting enough sugar in a mug of tea. She confessed, 'I was being an idiot and getting drunk...'

She and her boyfriend - identified by Adele only once, in an awards speech, as 'Alex' and later named in an unconfirmed news story as a photographer called Alex Sturrock - argued bitterly over a new song called Take It All. It sounded as if it was written by someone recognising that they are on the verge of a separation. Shortly after, they split up for good. 'This time, nobody did anything wrong,' she said at the time. 'We just fell out of love with one another. I had to deal with the devastation of feeling like a failure because I couldn't make things work.'

Adele was writing again. The emotions she felt composing the new album were entirely different from those she had expressed as a teenager on 19. Then she wanted to punch the boy who cheated on her; now she had a more mature approach, acknowledging her own faults, as well as those of her ex-boyfriend.

In October 2009, Adele received the news that Sturrock had become engaged a matter of months after they had split. She couldn't believe it. She sat mournfully on the end of her bed and roughed out the idea for a song called Someone Like You, which she completed on a writing trip to Los Angeles with songwriter Dan Wilson.

Adele saw the song as a life-changer. She played it to her manager and her mother that night. Her manager loved it and her mother cried. Penny had also told her that, with this beautiful song, she was fixing hearts after all. When she sang it at the Brits, shortly after 21 had broken sales records and hit number one in 16 countries, she rendered the audience spellbound. Adele began the song a star.

She ended it a superstar.

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How the troubled young Miss Adkins became the Adele we know and love

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She punched the boy who inspired her first hit, detested the father who deserted her and turned childhood trauma and teenage heartbreak into her signature tunes. The new Adele biography...

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100,000 Adele Fans Sing 'Someone Like You'

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100,000 Adele Fans Sing 'Someone Like You'

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Adele exemplifies here that she is a part of consumer culture. She acts as an aspirational object in which her audience have related to and therefore consumed her.

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100'000 Adele Fans Sing 'Someone Like You'

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'It devastated me': Adele opens up on struggle with anxiety and depression after divorce

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'It devastated me': Adele opens up on struggle with anxiety and depression after divorce

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The ITV News article discusses the depression and anxiety that stemmed from Adele's divorce.

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The singer at an NBA basketball game last month. Credit: AP

Adele has opened up about her mental health struggles, detailing how anxiety and depression left her bed bound following the breakdown of her marriage.

The Grammy Award-winning singer, 33, told how she felt "devastated and embarrassed" when news about her divorce to Simon Konecki emerged in 2019 .
Listen to the latest episode of ITV New's entertainment podcast Unscripted:
Adele told Rolling Stone magazine about the "tsunami of emotions" she felt during that time - but explained how she turned them into perhaps her most honest album yet.

The highly anticipated album 30 will arrive on November 19 and is expected to explore the separation and her relationship with son Angelo.

She said she had "never really felt present" in a happy home with her family.

"It made me really sad," she told the American music magazine. "Then having so many people that I don't know know that I didn't make that work... it f****** devastated me. I was embarrassed.

"No one made me feel embarrassed, but you feel like you didn't do a good job."

According to Rolling Stone she suffered "an intense few weeks of bed-bound anxiety" following the split, until the day of her 31st birthday in May 2019.

"I felt quite hopeful," Adele said. "It was the first time I felt I'd had a really nice evening and I was OK being in the house and going to bed on my own.

"I was not excited, but I was looking forward to the next day." She added that the following day she woke up and "saw this tsunami of emotions" coming towards her.

"I was like, 'this is going to be really f****** up-and-down'," she said.

Speaking about distracting herself from the emotional difficulty, the Rolling In The Deep singer said she threw herself "head first" into anything to soothe her anxiety, including travelling "anywhere where there's meant to be brilliant energy".

Reflecting on her weight loss and healthier lifestyle, she said: "(I thought) if I can transform my strength and my body like this, surely I can do it to my emotions and to my brain and to my inner well-being. That was what drove me.

"It just coincided with all of the emotional work that I was doing with myself as a visual for it, basically."

A two-hour special, which features an interview with Oprah Winfrey and performance of some of Adele's new tracks, will be broadcast on CBS on Sunday night.

An ITV concert to launch the album in the UK, recorded at the London Palladium, will air on November 21.

Adele said the loss of her father Mark Evans to cancer this year and her final conversation with him had "set her free".

"I don't think I understood the true deepness of how I felt about my dad until we spoke," she said.

"I think I've never been fully in any of my relationships.

"I always had this fear from a really young age that you're going to leave me anyway, so I'm going to leave or I'm not going to invest myself in anything."

Referring to her father's death she added: "It was like I let out one wail and something left. I've felt so calm ever since then. It really did set little me free."

She told Rolling Stone that since the death she had reconnected with US sports agent Rich Paul, for the most "incredible, open-hearted and easiest" relationship she had been in.

"I'm not frightened of loneliness any more," she said.

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'It devastated me': Adele opens up on struggle with depression after divorce | ITV News

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The Grammy Award-winning singer, 33, told how she felt "devastated and embarrassed" when news about her divorce to Simon Konecki emerged in 2019. | ITV National News

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Adele on “Rolling in the Deep” of Depression

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Adele on “Rolling in the Deep” of Depression

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The FHE Health article describes Adele's life-long battle with depression. Nobody, in spite of stardom, is exempt from mental illness. Fans that consume Adele can learn this by connecting with her music. She informs her audiences of the harsh reality that surrounds us but offers them a "safe space" to heal.

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FHE Health - Addiction & Mental Health Care

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Adele is arguably one of the most famous women on the planet. Since releasing her first album in 2008, she's sold 100 million records, and her music has won many accolades, including Grammy awards, Emmy awards and an Oscar. For someone so famous, she's reportedly an easy-to-talk-to and down-to-earth individual. And her song lyrics often speak of melancholy and inner struggle, which is why people find it easy to relate with Adele. Depression is a common yet debilitating mental illness, and the singer-songwriter has openly discussed her own struggles with the mood disorder on several occasions.

The artist's honesty about mental health may help reduce the stigma of mood disorders, while the powerful lyrics in her music can bring comfort to other people suffering from this condition. Her story shows how depression doesn't discriminate and even 10-time Grammy winners can find themselves battling the condition.

The Relatable Story of Adele's Depression

While most people relish media attention as soon as they reach fame, Adele has always been a quiet and private person. She has, however, spoken on multiple occasions about the mental health struggles she's faced in her life. The star has been battling recurring episodes of depression for most of her life, and after giving birth to her child in 2012, she suffered from postpartum depression. Her story is common and relatable and shows how no one is immune to experiencing mental health conditions.

Adele first opened up about her battle with postpartum depression in a 2016 cover story interview with Vanity Fair. "My knowledge of postpartum - or postnatal, as we call it in England - is that you don't want to be with your child; you're worried you might hurt your child; you're worried you weren't doing a good job. But I was obsessed with my child. I felt very inadequate," she explained. "It can come in many different forms."

In a 2021 interview with The Face, Adele opened up further about her feelings during that phase of her life. "I also got really quite bad postpartum depression, or postnatal as we call it [in the UK]. I think it was just... Not the pressure, but what kind of parent do you want to be? No one wants to be like their own parents, no matter how great parents they were or not."

Even as recently as 2022, the artist opened up to her fans during a performance about continuing therapy and the importance of looking after her mental well-being. "I started having therapy again because I went a few years without," she said before mentioning how her divorce a few years back triggered a depressive episode.

While Adele is one of the most well-known and beloved performers on the planet, she does admit to feeling insecure about performing in front of live audiences. "I always get so emotional. I love making music, but there is something about performing live that actually terrifies me and fills me with dread." Adele's mental health battle is a big part of who she is as an artist, and it probably helped fans to see her openly admit to not always being perfect. Most people can relate to the fear of public speaking, whether they suffer from a mood disorder or not.

Like everyone else, Adele has been through hardship, including a divorce from her husband, which left her feeling vulnerable. "Neither of us did anything wrong. Neither of us hurt each other or anything like that. It just wasn't right for me anymore. I didn't want to end up like a lot of other people I knew. I wasn't miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first," she said when asked who was to blame for the end of her marriage. When asked how she got through it, she mentioned having up to five therapy sessions per day and described her work as her "safe place."

Adele's Music Breaking the Stigma of Depression

Adele is notoriously private, but the few times she discussed her mental health battles, it helped destigmatize depression and other mood disorders such as anxiety. Her songs are full of powerful lyrics discussing themes of love, loss, sadness and resilience. Adele's mental illness is only one part of who she is as a person, and she's shown that even in the face of adversity, people can improve their lives. As an artist, she became a beloved and relatable figure, and her openness about depression likely helped fans feel less alone in their own struggles.

It's no coincidence that so many fans find Adele's music relatable. The lyrics describe sad life events, such as losing a loved one and getting older, that everyone goes through. Her music, combined with her powerful vocals, can bring a sense of peace and make the listener feel they're being understood. For example, in the hit song "Rolling in the Deep," the lyrics "a fever pitch and it's bringing me out of the dark" could directly refer to healing from a depressive episode.

Each of the singer-songwriter's albums was titled after the age she was when writing her songs. Her most recent album, 30, includes the singer's most brutally honest discussion of her divorce and how it affected her mental health.

The Cathartic Effect of Melancholic Music

Listening to sad music, such as any one of Adele's ballads, may seem counterintuitive for people living with depression. However, research suggests that this type of music can actually help alleviate some symptoms and even bring comfort to depressed individuals. Adele's music may offer listeners a safe space to express and fully engage with their feelings, which can cause them to relax and feel better afterward. Depressed individuals don't necessarily seek out melancholic music to feel even worse; instead, these types of songs can actually improve their mood.

As an artist, Adele brought comfort and hope to her fans. And her openness about mental health and personal struggle served to decrease the stigma surrounding depression, anxiety and other types of mood disorders.

You're not alone in your battle with depression. Here at FHE Health, we understand how debilitating the condition can be, and our team members are available 24/7 for compassionate and judgment-free care. Contact us today and start the journey towards a happier you.

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Exploring Depths: Adele on 'Rolling in the Deep' of Depression

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Knowing how Adele's depression helped shape her into the artist she is today shows how anyone can be affected by common mood disorders.

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Posted on Twitter (X) by Adele, the tweet highlights her recovery from all the trauma. Ultimately, her music and her fandom have healed her.

"Being on stage over the last year so up close and personal with an audience again after all these years has been a truly extraordinary restorative experience that I’ll never forget."

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This residency, these shows have changed my life. I desperately needed to fall back in love with performing live again, and I have. I needed to reconnect with my songs and remember what they mean to me, and I have! Being on stage over the last year so up close and personal with… https://t.co/aRV9DUT2Ej

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This residency, these shows have changed my life. I desperately needed to fall back in love with performing live again, and I have. I needed to reconnect with my songs and remember what they mean to me, and I have! Being on stage over the last year so up close and personal with… https://t.co/aRV9DUT2Ej https://t.co/Wkj39O8ozQ

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This residency, these shows have changed my life. I desperately needed to fall back in love with performing live again, and I have. I needed to reconnect with my songs and remember what they mean to me, and I have! Being on stage over the last year so up close and personal with… pic.twitter.com/Wkj39O8ozQ
— Adele (@Adele) October 20, 2023

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This residency, these shows have changed my life. I desperately needed to fall back in love with performing live again, and I have. I needed to reconnect with my songs and remember what they mean to me, and I have! Being on stage over the last year so up close and personal with… https://t.co/aRV9DUT2Ej https://t.co/Wkj39O8ozQ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
This residency, these shows have changed my life. I desperately needed to fall back in love with performing live again, and I have. I needed to reconnect with my songs and remember what they mean to me, and I have! Being on stage over the last year so up close and personal with… https://t.co/aRV9DUT2Ej https://t.co/Wkj39O8ozQ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
This residency, these shows have changed my life. I desperately needed to fall back in love with performing live again, and I have. I needed to reconnect with my songs and remember what they mean to me, and I have! Being on stage over the last year so up close and personal with… https://t.co/aRV9DUT2Ej

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Adele earns £30million - for doing nothing! (Mail Online: 2014)

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Adele rakes in huge royalties even though she hasn't released an album in three years

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Adele rakes in huge royalties even though she hasn't released an album in three years

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Mail Online (2021) reflects upon Adele's turnover which indicates her "worldwide success" and longevity.

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But if Adele has allowed her singing career to take a backseat to motherhood since then, it certainly hasn't dented her earning power.

The 25-year-old raked in £30million last year as the royalties of her record-breaking release 21 continued to pour in.

It was a 65 per cent increase on the year before and meant she could pay herself a £12million windfall - even after paying over £5million in corporation tax. This means she now earns more than £32,000 a day.

According to her latest accounts, the star's company Melted Stone saw its post-tax profits shoot up from £2.1million to £13.8million in just 12 months.

The accounts said the huge turnover 'reflects the worldwide success of the sound recording 21'.

The fact it has taken until now for the profits of her old record sales to reach her bank account was due to 'the time delay associated with the pay through of royalty income', the accounts said.

In addition to these millions, Adele's other company Melted Stone Publishing - which takes the profits of her lyrics and sheet music - made £5.2million in a year.

Miss Adkins, who was brought up by her mother in a flat above a south London shop, wrote 21 - which featured the hit single Rolling in the Deep - after breaking up with a boyfriend.

Since its release in 2011 it has sold more than 26million copies worldwide, making it the second-best selling album in British history after The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper.

Last month, it became the first album to sell more than three million digital copies.

But in the past three years the singer has remained relatively quiet, to the frustration of her millions of fans.

In late 2011 she was forced to undergo surgery on damaged vocal chords, and the following year she gave birth to her son Angelo.

Her one studio release since then - the theme tune to Bond film Skyfall - was an instant hit, shooting to the top of the charts.

She is now reportedly working on a third album, expected to be released later this year.

Miss Adkins' healthy bank balance is also a bonus for the tax man. Her accounts show she paid £5.1million in corporation tax in the financial year up to April 2013, and she will owe millions more in income tax.

No doubt the singer found the bill particularly unwelcome , given she made her opposition to the top rate of tax clear after the release of her first album 19.

At the time, she complained: 'I'm mortified to have to pay 50 percent. I use the NHS, I can't use the public transport any more.

'Trains are always late, most state schools are s*** and I've gotta give you, like, four million quid - are you having a laugh?'

Miss Adkins is in a relationship with entrepreneur Simon Konecki, 37. The couple have homes in Brighton and London, often spend time in Los Angeles, and recently rented a ten-bedroom mansion in West Sussex for £15,000 a month.

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Adele earns £30million - for doing nothing!

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According to the singer's latest accounts, her post-tax profits have shot up to £13.8million - the equivalent to £32,000 per day.

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Full List: The World's Highest-Paid Celebrities Of 2016

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Full List: The World's Highest-Paid Celebrities Of 2016

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In 2016, Adele was recognised by Forbes magazine as the 9th highest payed celebrity of that annual year, making $80,500,00.

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Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, LeBron James, Jackie Chan and Melissa McCarthy--what do they all have in common? They're members of this year's edition of the FORBES Celebrity 100, the definitive accounting of the top-earning entertainers on the planet.

These stars pulled in a collective $5.1 billion pretax during our June-to-June scoring period. Regrettably, that's more than the GDP of Belize, Gambia and Bhutan combined. Yet the list is surprisingly international in scope, ranging from Hollywood's usual suspects like top-earning actor Dwayne Johnson (No. 19, $64.5 million) and cover star Kim Kardashian (No. 43, $51 million) to Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen (No. 99, $30.5 million) and Korean pop sensation Bigbang (No. 54, $44 million).

Here at FORBES we recognize that, although many readers will enjoy exploring the list through our gorgeous interactive lander or browsing through a gallery of the top 100, some folks would prefer the cold, hard numbers. So, without further ado, here they are:

The 2016 Celebrity 100

1 Taylor Swift $170,000,000 USA

2 One Direction $110,000,000 UK

3 James Patterson $95,000,000 USA

4 Dr. Phil McGraw $88,000,000 USA

4 Cristiano Ronaldo $88,000,000 Portugal

6 Kevin Hart $87,500,000 USA

7 Howard Stern $85,000,000 USA

8 Lionel Messi $81,500,000 Argentina

9 Adele $80,500,000 UK

10 Rush Limbaugh $79,000,000 USA

11 LeBron James $77,000,000 USA

12 Madonna $76,500,000 USA

13 Ellen DeGeneres $75,000,000 USA

13 Rihanna $75,000,000 Barbados

15 Garth Brooks $70,000,000 USA

16 Roger Federer $68,000,000 Switzerland

17 AC/DC $67,500,000 Australia

18 Rolling Stones $66,500,000 UK

19 Dwayne Johnson $64,500,000 USA

20 David Copperfield $64,000,000 USA

21 Calvin Harris $63,000,000 UK (Scotland)

22 Diddy $62,000,000 USA

23 Jackie Chan $61,000,000 China

24 Bruce Springsteen $60,500,000 USA

25 Paul McCartney $56,500,000 UK

26 Kevin Durant $56,000,000 USA

26 Novak Djokovic $56,000,000 Serbia

26 Justin Bieber $56,000,000 Canada

26 Kenny Chesney $56,000,000 USA

30 Ryan Seacrest $55,000,000 USA

31 U2 $55,000,000 Ireland

31 The Weeknd $55,000,000 Canada

31 Matt Damon $55,000,000 USA

34 Beyonce $54,000,000 USA

34 Gordon Ramsay $54,000,000 UK (Scotland)

36 Jay Z $53,500,000 USA

37 Tom Cruise $53,000,000 USA

37 Cam Newton $53,000,000 USA

37 Jordan Spieth $53,000,000 USA

37 Phil Mickelson $53,000,000 USA

37 Luke Bryan $53,000,000 USA

42 Kim Kardashian $51,000,000 USA

43 Kobe Bryant $50,000,000 USA

44 Muse $49,000,000 UK

45 Foo Fighters $48,500,000 USA

46 Johnny Depp $48,000,000 USA

47 Toby Keith $47,500,000 USA

48 Judy Sheindlin $47,000,000 USA

49 Jennifer Lawrence $46,000,000 USA

49 Lewis Hamilton $46,000,000 UK

51 Tiger Woods $45,500,000 USA

52 Eli Manning $45,000,000 USA

53 Joe Flacco $44,500,000 USA

54 Floyd Mayweather $44,000,000 USA

54 Tom Brady $44,000,000 USA

54 Bigbang $44,000,000 South Korea

57 Jerry Seinfeld $43,500,000 USA

58 Sofia Vergara $43,000,000 Colombia

58 Ben Affleck $43,000,000 USA

60 Rory McIlroy $42,500,000 UK (N. Ireland)

61 Russell Wilson $42,000,000 USA

61 Elton John $42,000,000 USA

63 Dr. Dre $41,000,000 USA

63 Sebastian Vettel $41,000,000 Germany

63 Katy Perry $41,000,000 USA

66 Jimmy Buffett $40,500,000 USA

67 Mumford & Sons $40,000,000 UK

68 Jennifer Lopez $39,500,000 USA

69 Drake $38,500,000 Canada

70 Philip Rivers $38,000,000 USA

70 Tiesto $38,000,000

72 Neymar $37,500,000 Brazil

72 Rafael Nadal $37,500,000 Spain

72 Zlatan Ibrahimovic $37,500,000 Sweden

75 Jason Aldean $36,500,000 USA

75 Fernando Alonso $36,500,000 Spain

77 Gareth Bale $36,000,000 UK (Wales)

78 Vin Diesel $35,000,000 USA

78 Marcell Dareus $35,000,000 USA

80 Derrick Rose $34,000,000 USA

80 Peyton Manning $34,000,000 USA

82 Ed Sheeran $33,500,000 UK

82 A.J. Green $33,500,000 USA

82 Kei Nishikori $33,500,000 Japan

82 Maroon 5 $33,500,000 USA

86 Shah Rukh Khan $33,000,000 India

86 Dave Matthews Band $33,000,000 USA

86 Robert Downey, Jr. $33,000,000 USA

86 Melissa McCarthy $33,000,000 USA

86 James Harden $33,000,000 USA

91 Usain Bolt $32,500,000 Jamaica

92 Clayton Kershaw $32,000,000 USA

92 Dwyane Wade $32,000,000 USA

94 Penn & Teller $31,500,000 USA

94 Brad Pitt $31,500,000 USA

94 Akshay Kumar $31,500,000 India

97 Carmelo Anthony $31,000,000 USA

97 Drew Brees $31,000,000 USA

99 Gisele Bundchen $30,500,000 Brazil

99 Britney Spears $30,500,000 USA

To form the Celebrity 100, FORBES evaluates front-of-the-camera talent across the entire entertainment world, considering pretax income from June to June. Fees for agents, managers and lawyers are not deducted. Figures are based on numbers from Nielsen, Pollstar, Box Office Mojo, Songkick and IMDB, as well as interviews with industry insiders and many of the stars themselves.
EDITED BY Zack O'Malley Greenburg and Natalie Robehmed; REPORTED BY Kurt Badenhausen, Madeline Berg, Keren Blankfeld, Cherie Hu, Ryan Mac, Maggie McGrath and Susan Radlauer; ONLINE Ariana Santana with Hayley Cuccinello, Uyen Cao, Tom Conroy, Irwin Hou and Forbes Video. For more on the business of entertainment, sign up for my email updates and check out my books on Jay Z and Michael Jackson.

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Full List: The World's Highest-Paid Celebrities Of 2016

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Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, LeBron James, Jackie Chan and Melissa McCarthy--what do they all have in common? They're members of this year's edition of the FORBES Celebrity 100, the definitive accounting of the top-earning entertainers on the planet.

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Adele: Mummy's been having a lot of big feelings recently
Angelo: Like how?
Adele: Just, like, hang on, my fingers are trapped
Like, um, I feel a bit confused
Angelo: Why?
Adele: I don't know
Adele: And I feel like I don't really know what I'm doing
Angelo: Oh, at all?
Adele: At all

The song includes heartfelt conversations between Adele and her song that allude to previous heartbreak in her life. Here, her divorce and present anxiety. She attempts to communicate with her 9-year-old son what it is she's going through.

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"I'm having a bad day, I'm having a very anxious day

I feel very paranoid, I feel very stressed

Um, I have a hangover, which never helps, but
I feel like today is the first day since I left him that I feel lonely
And I never feel lonely, I love being on my own"

The outro of the song is a monologue of Adele speaking alone, expressing that she is "anxious", "paranoid", "stressed" and "lonely". From this, she is enable to establish a relationship with her fandom, in particularly those who may be going through similar struggles.

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A deeply personal song that is simply about an obsolete relationship. Many of her young fans listen to this song to relate to their own extinct relationships, thus leading to a Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance in 2012.

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She sings about a relationship she knows is coming to an end, but asks for one more night, to delay the trauma, and remember how love should be.

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This song is about a girl who has fallen in love with a boy and her struggles in pursuing him, evoking a lonely and helpless feeling when you are forced to supress such a strong emotion.

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Each song, despite being taken from different albums, are consistent in retaining the infamous blue-eyed soul music genre that ultimately shapes her star image. She is primarily known for being a singer synonymous with heartbreak and she has maintains this perception over four different stages in her young life.

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Why Adele Won't Agree To Endorsement Deals

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Why Adele Won't Agree To Endorsement Deals

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“What have I said ‘no’ to? Everything you can imagine,” she said, before elaborating. “Literally every-fucking-thing. Books, clothes, food ranges, drink ranges, fitness ranges… That’s probably the funniest. They wanted me to be the face of a car. Toys. Apps. Candles. It’s, like, I don’t want to endorse a line of nail varnishes, but thanks for asking. A million pounds to sing at your birthday party? I’d rather do it for free if I’m doing it, cheers…?

Adele is not a profit-making machine. Instead, she challenges this celebrity norm that and distances herself from commodifying daily pleasures and avoids being a part of a wider economic structure.

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Adele isn't your typical popstar, but we already knew that. However, despite her established outlier status, the singer's bracing honesty in interviews still continues to take us by surprise. In a recent interview with The Guardian, the Hello singer discussed her refusal to participate in endorsement deals, explaining she's been offered money to publicly approve of everything bar the kitchen sink but won't bite.

"What have I said 'no' to? Everything you can imagine," she said, before elaborating. "Literally every-fucking-thing. Books, clothes, food ranges, drink ranges, fitness ranges... That's probably the funniest. They wanted me to be the face of a car. Toys. Apps. Candles. It's, like, I don't want to endorse a line of nail varnishes, but thanks for asking. A million pounds to sing at your birthday party? I'd rather do it for free if I'm doing it, cheers...?

Endorsements are a fact of modern celebrity. Every personality with a significant amount of social media followers has posed?in a pair of tagged sunglasses. Does anyone actually lie around in their back garden feeling complete because of their Calvin Kleins? Phones at Coachella must have a super battery for all the drinks companies Instagirls have to pay tribute to. I know Irish women of whom my mother wouldn't have a notion being paid in cash or in kind to 'endorse' cars, spa treatments and even herbal tea. Obviously actual celebrity is a step up in terms of bankable riches, there's not a beauty product in sight that doesn't have a recognizable face attached to it. In fact, strong rumour has it Adele walked away from a massive L'Oreal contract some years ago at the final negotiations stages.

About fame, Adele says that at a certain stage,?'money is all that gets thrown at you?. It must be tempting to follow the cash, a weakness Adele admits to:??It's very easy to give in to being famous. Because it's charming. It's powerful. It draws you in. Really, it's harder work resisting it. But after a while I just refused to accept a life that was not real.?

However, the Oscar-winning'singer-songwriter says she overcame all that around the time of 21. ?Like, becoming OK with having things done for you. Or - no - expecting things to be done for you. I've had a few moments like that. And it frightened me. I think it was something simple like running out of clean clothes. And me not having the initiative to wash my own clothes. I was annoyed that my clothes weren't clean... Around the time of 21, when I was on top of the mountain. So I told myself I'd better abseil down. And go and do my fucking laundry.?

As always, refreshing insights on something most people shy away from discussing. Thank you, Adele.
Via The Guardian

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Why Adele Won't Agree To Endorsement Deals | IMAGE.ie

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Hello singer and everyone's favourite celebrity Adele isn't your typical popstar. But we already knew that.

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Adele Debuts James Bond Theme: Listen to ‘Skyfall’ (2012)

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Adele Debuts James Bond Theme: Listen to ‘Skyfall’ (2012)

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Speaking about her collaboration with the James Bond franchise, Adele described this as a "no brainer". Her music and persona resents themes relevant to the film, therefore she is of high celebrity value. The film generates new fans for the star, and the star attracts new fans to the film.

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As of 0:07 London time, Adele's James Bond theme song, "Skyfall," is streaming on her website and available on iTunes, a few weeks before the series' latest film, starring Daniel Craig, hits theaters.

Adele's voice is accompanied by a 77-piece orchestra on the Paul Epworth-produced song, which is on track to become another James Bond classic, like those recorded for previous films by Paul McCartney, Nancy Sinatra and Madonna. "This is the end. Hold your breath and count to 10," Adele sings as the song begins. "Feel the earth move and then hear my heart burst again." Listen below.

For 24 hours beginning at 6 a.m. local time on Friday, Oct. 5, "Skyfall" will be played hourly on all of Clear Channel's mainstream top 40, adult top 40 and adult contemporary stations. It's the latest single supported by hourly radio plays, following similar launches for Rihanna's "Diamonds," Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," and earlier singles from Jason Aldean, Madonna, and Kenny Chesney & Tim McGraw.

The Top 10 James Bond Theme Songs Ever

"Skyfall" has been available for pre-order in the U.S. iTunes store since Monday, and it's Adele's first new studio recording in more than 18 months since "21" hit shelves in January 2011. The SoundScan tracking week ends at the close of business on Sunday, Oct. 7, so "Skyfall" will have a little over three days worth of sales in its first charting week. How much "Skyfall" will sell is anyone's guess at this point.

The song's Oct. 5 release (or Oct. 4 at 7:07 p.m. ET in the U.S.) coincides with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise's debut. The latest installment of the series premieres in the U.K. on Oct. 26 and in the U.S. on Nov. 9.

"I was a little hesitant at first to be involved with the theme song for 'Skyfall,'" Adele said in a statement announcing the song's debut. "There's a lot of instant spotlight and pressure when it comes to a Bond song. But I fell in love with the script and Paul had some great ideas for the track and it ended up being a bit of a no brainer to do it in the end."

What do you think of Adele's "Skyfall" theme? Vote in our poll and discuss your thoughts in the comments below!

What do you think of Adele's "Skyfall" theme?

Additional reporting by Keith Caulfield, L.A.

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Adele Debuts James Bond Theme: Listen to 'Skyfall'

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At 0:07 London time, Adele's James Bond theme song, "Skyfall," debuted on her website and on iTunes, a few weeks before the series' latest film, starring Daniel Craig, hits ...

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And returns full circle back to the Public Sphere

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And returns full circle back to the Public Sphere

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Adele's stardom is so successful that she is a part of consumer culture and is targeted by marketers who "use celebrity endorsements as a means of profiling and branding their products, television programmes feature guest appearances from celebrities to build their audiences" (Turner, 2013: 37).

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Adele's stardom is so successful that she is a part of consumer culture and is targeted by marketers who "use celebrity endorsements as a means of profiling and branding their products, television programmes feature guest appearances from celebrities to build their audiences" (Turner, 2013: 37).

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Turner, G. (2013) ‘The Economy of Celebrity’, in Graeme Turner (2013) Understanding Celebrity (2nd Edition), London: Sage pp.33-55.

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Adele with her Five Grammy Awards (2017)

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Adele with her Five Grammy Awards (2017)

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She has retained her success since 2012 and this establishes her as a star. Her stardom has been created solely through musical ability, performance and skill.

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The video has been watched by over 262 million people, the most viewed Carpool Karaoke to date, highlighting her superstardom.

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It’s difficult to buy into a fake celebrity persona with Adele because she sometimes gets irritated on stage and this is often by her own fans.

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She raps Nicki Minaj's verse in the hit song 'Monster'. Here, she utilises other musical talents outside of the soul music genre she is known for to magnify her persona.

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Discusses buying families birthday meals and giving fans free tickets to shows when she's drunk.

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She has never sexualised herself to achieve stardom.

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According to Rojek, Adele is an "achieved celebrity" whereby she "derives from the perceived accomplishments of the individual in open competition" because she possesses "rare talents or skills" (2001: 18).

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According to Rojek, Adele is an "achieved celebrity" whereby she "derives from the perceived accomplishments of the individual in open competition" because she possesses "rare talents or skills" (2001: 18).

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Rojek, C. (2001). Celebrity. Reaktion Books.

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Redmond (2013: 4) states that "a celebrity is someone that for the most part leads a glamorous and wealthy life, and they are especially talented". Here, Adele guides her viewers through her 'glamourous' home in Los Angeles whilst attending to regular daily chores such as unpacking shopping and watering flowers. Whilst her home is "glamorous and wealthy", she still continues with house work.

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Question: You became a star; how did you handle being recognised in public?

Adele: Erm, I don’t love it, but ever since 21 sort of came out really my hair gets bigger, and my makeup gets thicker, and my dresses get bigger so that I practically look a bald eagle or something like that in day to day life

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"Comfort over style" (Adele)

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Adele Has A Framed Piece Of Celine Dion's Gum at Home

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Adele Has A Framed Piece Of Celine Dion's Gum at Home

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Adele names a framed piece of Celine Dion's gum as her most "prized possession".

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Adele Has A Framed Piece Of Celine Dion's Gum at Home

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This man was trying to show Adele a picture of his wife who passed away. (YouTube)

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Adele cries when a fan shows her a picture of his late wife (2023)

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Adele cries when a fan shows her a picture of his late wife (2023)

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Adele's star image is affectionate and sympathetic here. Her own past trauma has shaped her into a charming, amiable figure that helps her relate to the struggles her fans are experiencing.

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This man was trying to show Adele a picture of his wife who passed away.

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shorts #shortsvideo #viral #shortsclip #life #love #instagood #instagram #happy #like #follow #lifestyle #photography #motivation #photooftheday #art #smile...

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Adele's interaction with Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Hailey Baldloose (2023)

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Adele's interaction with Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Hailey Baldloose (2023)

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At a recent show, whilst walking through the crowd past some of the globes most well-known celebrities, Adele focuses her attention on her plain folk fans and deviates from other stars. By prioritising her fans, she not only strengthens her relationship with them, but allows her audience to consume her further.

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Adele IGNORES Kim Kardashian and Kendall Jenner

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Adele's sincere star image contributes to her behaviour in this Instagram Live. She exemplifies her authenticity by crafting a grandma-like persona as she openly demonstrates her cluelessness with the concept of Instagram Live. She blends this persona with her humour to heighten her legitimacy.

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Adele's Instagram Live Was Chaotic & Iconic #Shorts

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"Liveness on social media increases claims of intimacy and authenticity instead of quality" (Howell, 2021: 266)

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"Liveness on social media increases claims of intimacy and authenticity instead of quality" (Howell, 2021: 266)

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Howell, C.E. (2021) ‘A Touch More with Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird- authenticity, intimacy and women’s sports celebrity on Instagram Live’, Celebrity Studies, 14 (3), pp. 264-279.

DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2021.1958694

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Adele markets her work appropriately - she announced her latest album on the 13th October, just under a month from its release date in order to ensure enough time to create excitement, but not too much time to bore her audience.

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6M likes, 54K comments - adele on October 13, 2021: "30 - November 19" 

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Adele (@adele)

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Adele ‘got addicted’ to exercise to lose 7st - singer's intense exercise plan shared 

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Adele ‘got addicted’ to exercise to lose 7st - singer's intense exercise plan shared 

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Adele explains the reason for her seven-stone weight loss. She states that she "did it for myself and not anyone else”. Her physique has shifted from her public to private sphere.

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In 2021, Adele spoke publicly about losing 100lbs, which is equivalent to just over seven stone. She shared the methods she used to help her reach her health goals and combat anxiety at the same time. Instead of following a fad diet, the singer lost weight over two years by lifting weights and doing circuit training.

During an interview with Oprah, Adele said she felt like her "body has been objectified my entire career".

She said "people have been talking about my body for 12 years" and that her weight loss journey was personal, stating she "did it for myself and not anyone else" so didn't feel the need to openly discuss it.

Adele also said she never felt like she "needed" to slim down. "I was body positive [before my weight loss], and I'm body positive now," she explained.

"You don't need to be overweight to be body positive, you can be any shape or size."
READ MORE: Prince Edward has 'suddenly lost so much weight' fans claim - pictures
As for how she achieved her weight loss, she revealed her intense exercise regime to British Vogue.

During the initial Covid quarantine, Adele worked out three times a day.

She explained: "So I do my weights in the morning, then I normally hike or I box in the afternoon, and then I go and do my cardio at night."

Adele also confessed she had started deadlifting, beginning with 10lbs before working her way up to an impressive 170lbs. She joked: "I'm an athlete, I love it!"
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Adele also enjoys boxing adding she has a "left hook that could kill".

Exercising was not just about losing weight, it was about embracing a healthier lifestyle.

She said she worked out "because of my anxiety" and exercising helped her "feel better".

"It was never about losing weight, it was always about becoming strong and giving myself as much time every day without my phone. I got quite addicted to it," Adele added.

Her anxiety surfaced when she was going through her divorce, and she admitted she suffered from "the most terrifying anxiety attacks after I left my marriage".

Working out every day gave Adele "discipline" and helped fill her otherwise empty schedule.

In terms of food, Adele denied the rumours she followed a Sirtfood diet: "No. Ain't done that. No intermittent fasting. Nothing."

She said "if anything I eat more than I used to because I work out so hard. And also, that whole thing of like, 'Gets Revenge Body'... Oh my God. Suck my d**k."

It was at Drake's birthday party in October 2019 when the world noticed Adele was slimmer. She posted an image of herself and captioned it: "I used to cry but now I sweat."

Then for her 32nd birthday in May 2020, Adele posted a more dramatic photo thanking her fans for good wishes and she was notably thinner.

In August of the same year, Adele posed to congratulate Beyonce and fans didn't recognise her.

She also posted an image of herself in a bikini top with the Jamaican flag in 2020 as a tribute to Notting Hill Carnival, and her weight loss was obvious.

In October 2020, Adele joked about her weight loss during her SNL monologue, saying: "Because of all the Covid restrictions...I had to travel light and I could only bring half of me, and this is the half I chose."

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Adele lost 7st with gruelling exercise plan - 'I got addicted'

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Adele has slimmed down in recent years losing seven stone through exercise. Here's the plan she followed.

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Because Adele "articulate[s] what it is to be a human being in contemporary society" (Dyer, 2003: 7), her music retains its popularity, regardless of her music hiatus.

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Because Adele "articulate[s] what it is to be a human being in contemporary society" (Dyer, 2003: 7), her music retains its popularity, regardless of her music hiatus.

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Dyer, R. (2003) Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, London : Routledge

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Adele is a music star and this remains her primary function. This collaboration is to showcase her as a music star. Whilst she's working in the film industry, she does not need to elevate her stardom by acting or showing her face in the film. This gives us a deeper impression of the real her; she is solely focussed on her primary function as a musician.

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Media convergence "involves the same content being delivered by way of different media platforms" (Turner, 2013: 36). This doesn't damage Adele's star image.

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Media convergence "involves the same content being delivered by way of different media platforms" (Turner, 2013: 36). This doesn't damage Adele's star image.

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Turner, G. (2013) ‘The Economy of Celebrity’, in Graeme Turner (2013) Understanding Celebrity (2nd Edition), London: Sage pp.33-55.

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Adele reads a fan-made sign requesting a hug. She invites the fan and his mum to the stage where she hugs him and re-seats them close to the front. Her sincerity and love towards her fans is truly exemplified here.

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70.8K Likes, 392 Comments. TikTok video from caryssa🪐 (@delly.fromtheblock): "a hug from Adele would make every problem disappear🤍 #adele #hug #dream #fypシ #foryou #weekendswithadele". adele. original sound - caryssa🪐.

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"Artists that market their albums for months may run the risk of their audience losing interest." (Boyajan: 2018). Adele's announcement of the release of her album is timely and does not run the risk of losing momentum. 

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"Artists that market their albums for months may run the risk of their audience losing interest." (Boyajan: 2018). Adele's announcement of the release of her album is timely and does not run the risk of losing momentum. 

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Boyajan, N. (2018) ‘Surprise Albums & Ad Fatigue in the Music Industry’, Medium, 25 July (Accessed: 03 November 2023)

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There is no worse feeling than waking up in the morning to find out that Beyoncé released an album in the middle of the night while you were sleeping. The whole world got a head start on her music - except you.

Surprise!

In 2013, Beyoncé gave us all a "heart attack" when she released her album "Beyoncé" out of the blue. According to Billboard, "Beyoncé" broke the record for the largest album sales week ever on iTunes. She broke the record in only three days and with no pre-release announcement. Earlier this year, five years later, Beyoncé and her husband, Jay-Z, snuck up on us again, releasing their first joint album, Everything Is Love, with no heads up.

The Weeknd followed in Beyoncé's footsteps this year, taking to Instagram on March 29 to announce that his album "My Dear Melancholy," would drop at midnight. That album went straight to number one.

Rapper J. Cole gave his fans just a week's notice before releasing his fifth album, KOD. Cole is no stranger to using the element of surprise to his sales advantage, either. His third album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, dropped without any indication that he was even working on new music, and his fourth album, 4 Your Eyes Only, was announced only through an iTunes pre order page, according to.

No Surprise

1. The majority of the artists who release surprise albums are household names-anything they release has the potential to hit number one. However, these artists aren't just capitalizing on their fame - they're capitalizing on shrinking attention spans. Artists that market their albums for months may run the risk of their audience losing interest. Buzz around most traditionally marketed albums has months to gain momentum and in today's fast moving media landscape, by the time these records drop, there's nothing novel or exciting about it to grasp fans' attention.

2. When an album is released by surprise, it generates a type of buzz that no amount of careful marketing could ever do. The impulse reaction at drop is to immediately jump to a streaming platform to see that the news is true and listen immediately. It creates an emotional reaction that a billboard or ad cannot illicit. While this excitement is quick and intense, it does fade just as quickly as it began. However, by the time it fades, the albums sales have already been made.

3. Surprise albums generate a rush to be the first to post about it on social media and be the first in your friend group to know about it. The surprise element creates an immediacy to post your knowledge of it on social media outlets, generating free marketing for the album.

Surprise albums have become have almost become expected in the world of music. But with no hype leading up to the release date, how do these albums propel to the top of the charts?

Surprise albums have become part of our lives and show no sign of going out of style. We need to face the fact that we should never go to bed with the notion that we are safe from a new Beyoncé album.

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Surprise Albums & Ad Fatigue in the Music Industry

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There is no worse feeling than waking up in the morning to find out that Beyoncé released an album in the middle of the night while you were sleeping. The whole world got a head start on her music -...

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Adele - Someone Like You (Official Music Video)

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Adele's music video are a reflection on her mentality. Her music videos typically:

Lack colour

Are low-budget

Adhere to her style

Don't pursue CGI or special effects