Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (; born 5 May 1988), known mononymously as Adele, is an English singer-songwriter. She is known for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and songwriting. Adele has received numerous accolades including 16 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award.
After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a record deal with XL Recordings. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 and included the UK top-five singles "Chasing Pavements" and "Make You Feel My Love". 19 has sold over 2.5 million copies in the UK and was named in the top 20 best-selling debut albums of all time in the UK. Adele was honoured with the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
Adele released her second studio album, 21, in 2011. It became the world's best-selling album of the 21st century, with sales of over 31 million. 21 holds the record for the top-performing album in US chart history, topping the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks, with the singles "Rolling in the Deep", "Someone like You", and "Set Fire to the Rain" heading charts worldwide, becoming her signature songs. The album received a record-tying six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. In 2012, Adele released "Skyfall", a soundtrack single for the James Bond film Skyfall, which won her the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Adele's third studio album, 25, was released in 2015, breaking first-week sales records in the UK and US. In the US, it remains the only album to sell over three million copies in a week. 25 earned her five Grammy Awards, including the Album of the Year. The lead single, "Hello", achieved huge success worldwide. Her fourth studio album, 30, released in 2021, contains the chart-topping and Grammy-winning single "Easy on Me". 25 and 30 became the best-selling albums worldwide, including the US and the UK, in 2015 and 2021, respectively. As of 2023, all of her studio albums, except 19, have topped the yearly best-selling albums chart worldwide in the 21st century.
Adele is one of the world's best-selling music artists, with sales of over 120 million records worldwide. She was named the best-selling artist of the 2010s decade in the US and worldwide, as well as the best-selling female artist of the 21st century in the UK. Her studio albums, 21 and 25 are certified Diamond in the US, the most of any artist who debuted in the 21st century.
Early life and education
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on 5 May 1988 in the Tottenham district of London, to an English mother, Penny Adkins, and a Welsh father, Marc Evans. After Evans left when Adele was 2, she was brought up by her mother. She began singing at age 4 and asserts that she became obsessed with voices. In 1997, 9-year-old Adele and her mother, who by then had found work as a furniture maker and an adult-learning activities organiser, relocated to Brighton on the south coast of England.
In 1999, Adele and her mother moved back to London; first to Brixton, then to the neighbouring district of West Norwood in south London, which is the subject of her first song "Hometown Glory". Adele spent much of her youth in Brockwell Park where she would play the guitar and sing to friends, which she recalled in her 2015 song "Million Years Ago". She stated, "It has quite monumental moments of my life that I've spent there, and I drove past it [in 2015] and I just literally burst into tears. I really missed it." Adele graduated from the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon in May 2006, where she was a classmate of Leona Lewis and Jessie J. Adele credits the school with nurturing her talent even though, at the time, she was more interested in going into artists and repertoire (A&R) and hoped to launch other people's careers.
Career
2006–2010: Career beginnings and 19
Four months after graduation, Adele published two songs on the fourth issue of the online arts publication PlatformsMagazine.com. She had recorded a three-song demo for a class project and given it to a friend. The friend posted the demo on Myspace, where it became very successful and led to a phone call from Richard Russell, director of the music label XL Recordings. She doubted if the offer was real because the only record company she knew was Virgin Records, and she took a friend with her to the meeting. Around this time, Adele collaborated with Ricsta on "Be Divine", a song described as an "electronic club-ready" track.