If you’re looking for a great album to purchase this year, make it Adele’s 21, her sophomore effort has blown away even her first Grammy winning album 19, and made Adele a favorite household name all across the world. She’s even got an iPhone app for all the latest news and updates. Get a free iPhone app from iTunes here.
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, born May 5, 1988 in Tottenham, North London, England has taken the musical world by storm. With her bluesy, soulful and heartfelt voice, her poetry comes to life unlike any current artist in the mainstream music world today.
Her music makes us feel something, gives us chills, and reminds us why we listen to music in the first place. Her talent can be compared to the greats, and at only 23, Adele has a long music career in front of her.
Adele’s sophomore album “21” was recorded in Malibu and London, and released on February 22, 2011 in North America, and January 21, 2011 in the UK and most of Europe.
The album “21” was named after her age at the time of recording it, just like her first album “19”, which was written and recorded when she was still nineteen years old.
Wikipedia stated that The Official Charts Company listed Adele as the first living artist to achieve the feat of two top five hits in both the UK Official Singles Chart and the Official Albums Chart simultaneously since The Beatles in 1964. 21 has spent eleven consecutive weeks at number one in the UK, the longest ever by a female solo artist on the UK Albums Chart, surpassing Madonna ‘s nine weeks at number one in 1990 with her greatest hits compilation The Immaculate Collection. Also, as of June 2011, Adele sold over 2.5 million copies of 21 and 992,000 digital copies in the U.S., making it the best-selling album in both categories in the first half of 2011. The first single, “Rolling in the Deep” reached number 1 in 8 countries including the Billboard Hot 100. The song has sold 4.825 million digital copies in the US by Aug. 21, 2011, the most digital copies of a song ever sold in a single year in the US.
Here’s a snippet from spinner.com who spoke with her in November, “Adele’s latest, which she recorded in part with Rick Rubin, was heavily influenced by a relationship gone awry. “I was angry!” the British chanteuse told Spinner in November. “I was really, really angry with with my personal life… I have the upper hand now, so, yeah, the whole record is a bit bitter.”
More quotes from Adele about 21:
“I think I come across moody and serious with my music,” she says, “but, in real life, I’m sarcastic and very cheeky. I really wanted at least one song on this album that was representative of me as a girl, as a person. I don’t think the playful me came across on the first album. It’s important to show growth and development.”
Drawing inspiration from her own life, Adele says, “I had the most poignant relationship in between these two records. I feel really blessed and lucky I was given that relationship and able to have it. Sometimes when I meet artists, they don’t seem to have any reality in their lives. It’s completely in a bubble that’s not allowed to be burst. I’m just screaming for my bubble to be burst. I met him and he was brilliant, it was a really great relationship and it went sour, obviously, because I made a bitchy record about him (laughs). He made me really passionate for myself, for him, for love, for life, for food, for wine, for film, for politics, architecture, traveling which I hate–I hate flying and stuff like that. He made me really really interested in just being alive, which I hadn’t felt yet. It was incredible. When I was promoting 19, I thought, ‘What the hell am I going to write about? Hotels? Air miles? I was very very lucky that life intervened.”
As much as 21 is about love’s rocky road, it’s also about finding peace in life’s turmoil’s. “That’s what the record is about,” says Adele, “and I’m just more forgiving because of it.”
“To me,” she says, “music is all about relating. I would never dare write a song about success or anything to do with my career, because it doesn’t happen to many people. What I love about music is when I’m totally convinced that someone has written a song about me even if it was written 80 years before I was born. I would love it if someone felt that about one of my songs and I love it when people go ‘I thought you were inside my heart or inside my head, you know exactly what I’m feeling.’” ~biography provided by artist or their representative
Track Listings from 21 – Listen to Adele’s 21 at Amazon.com, or check out her lyrics here.
(My favorites are starred)
1. *Rolling In The Deep
2. Rumour Has It
3. Turning Tables
4. Don’t You Remember
5. *Set Fire To The Rain
6. He Won’t Go
7. Take It All
8. I’ll Be Waiting
9. One And Only
10. *Lovesong (Cure Cover)
11. *Someone Like You
RESOURCES & More Reading:
Official site for Adele http://www.adele.tv/home/
Free Adele iPhone app from iTunes here
Follow Adele on Official Twitter site; http://twitter.com/#!/OfficialAdele
Wikipedia; Adele; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adele_%28singer%29
Amazon Adele 21: cd, digital mp3, or vinyl.
Spinner.com Adele Interview http://www.spinner.com/2011/01/07/new-albums-2011/
Videos for adele 21 ADELE | Free Music, Tour Dates, Photos, Videos www.myspace.com/adelelondon