Adele

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (born 5 May 1988), better known mononymously as Adele, is an English recording artist and songwriter. Adele was offered a recording contract from XL Recordings after a friend posted her demonstration on MySpace in 2006. The next year she received the Brit Awards "Critics' Choice" and won the BBC Sound of 2008. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 to much commercial and critical success in the UK. 19 was certified four times platinum in the UK. Her career in the US was boosted by a Saturday Night Live appearance in late 2008. At the 2009 Grammy Awards, Adele received the awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She has also won a total of 8 Grammy Awards and 3 Brit Awards.

Adele released her second album, 21, in early 2011. The album was well received critically and surpassed the success of her debut commercially. 21 has been certified 14 times platinum in the UK; in the US the album held the top position longer than any other album since 1993. The success of 21 earned Adele numerous mentions in the Guinness Book Of World Records. The album won the Grammy for Album of the Year. She is the first artist to sell more than 3 million copies of an album in a year in the UK. With her two albums and the first two singles from 21, "Rolling in the Deep" and "Someone Like You", Adele became 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. With her third release from the album, "Set Fire to the Rain", becoming her third number one single in the US, Adele became the first artist in history to lead the Billboard 200 concurrently with three Billboard Hot 100 number ones. 21 is the longest running number one album by a female solo artist on the UK Albums Chart and is tied for the longest cumulative stay at number one by a female solo artist as well. In 2011, Adele was artist of the year by Billboard and "Rolling in the Deep" was the year's best-selling song in the United States.

Early Life

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born in Tottenham, north London, UK, to a single teenage mother named Penny on 5 May 1988. Adele's father split from Adele's mother when Adele was 3 years which as of 2012[update] Adele had not forgiven him for. She began singing at age four and asserts that she became obsessed with voices. Adele has cited the Spice Girls as a major influence in regard to her love and passion for music, stating that "they made me what I am today." Adele impersonated the Spice Girls at dinner parties as a young girl. To make her look like singer Gabrielle, her mother made an eye patch with sequins, which Adele said was embarrassing. At the age of nine, Adele and her mother, a furniture-maker and adult learning activities organiser, relocated to Brighton. At the age of 11, Adele and her mother moved to Brixton, and then to neighbouring district West Norwood, in South London. West Norwood is the subject for Adele's first record, "Hometown Glory", written when she was 16. After moving to South London, she became interested in R&B artists such as Aaliyah, Destiny's Child and Mary J. Blige.

Adele says that one of the most defining moments in her life was when she watched Pink perform at Brixton Academy. "It was the Missundaztood record, so I was about 13 or 14. I had never heard, being in the room, someone sing like that live I remember sort of feeling like I was in a wind tunnel, her voice just hitting me. It was incredible." 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. In school, she was more interested in going into A&R and hoped to launch other people's careers. Although she moved away from North London aged nine, Adele remains an ardent fan of her hometown Premier League football club Tottenham Hotspur.

Personal Life

Adele said that her album 21 was inspired by her ex-boyfriend and the heartbreak. In 2012 Adele was renting a £7 million mansion in West Sussex with boyfriend Simon Konecki.

From : www.wikipedia.org