Belmont and Belcourt Biographies - Adele

Copyright 2012

All rights reserved. Neither this book nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form without permission.

eISBN: 9781619840652

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on May 5, 1988, in Tottenham, North London. These days, shes better known as Adele, a pop singer with a soulful voice. Adele spent her childhood in London, with her early childhood centered on North London, in Tottenham, then later in Lambeth, South London. The only child to 18-year-old art student Penny Adkins and plumber Mark Evans, Adele openly shares the difficult circumstances of her birth and childhood. [Penny] fell pregnant with me when she would have been applying for uni, but chose to have me instead. She never, ever reminds me of that. I try to remember it.

Tottenham, North London, where the young family first settled, was mainly an Afro-Caribbean neighborhood and had a reputation for some of the highest rates of poverty, unemployment and gun and gang violence in the UK. Penny later decided to move the family to Brixton, South London, which many would consider an even rougher neighborhood. It was only later in Adeles life that they settled in West Norwood, a residential suburb in South London.

Although her childhood was not all smooth sailing, Adele jokes about it now. I always call myself Delly from the block. You know J.Los Jenny from the Block? she laughs. I think I was just a thick-skinned girl from a very young age.

Her father left them in 1991, when Adele was three years old, returning to Wales where he spiraled into alcoholism. Evans was estranged from the family during Adeles teenage years as a result. Adele has shared in interviews that there isnt much of a relationship between them and that its been that way for the last ten years or so. Adele maintains that she never really knew her father. Evans has since admitted, I was a rotten father at a time when she really needed me.

Penny Adkins raised Adele herself, giving up her own aspirations because she thought Adele was more important. She worked as a freelance masseuse, furniture-maker and organized adult learning activities. In between her jobs, she found time to take Adele to music classes. During her childhood, Adele attended ten schools, moving from apartment to apartment, mostly in and around South London.

Although Adele was raised an only child by a young single mother, she was part of a huge, extended family. Penny Adkins was one of five siblings, so Adele was always surrounded by aunts, cousins, and second cousins. She recounts, Moms side is massive. All brilliant. Dominated by women and all really helping each other out, so even though she brought me up on her own, it was kind of a team effort. This contributed to her career choice, and even her characteristic boisterousness: You had to fight to get your voice heard because everyone was screaming and chatting at the same time.

Despite coming from a distinctly nonmusical family, music still made a mark upon her childhood. Adele attended her first concert The Cure at Finsbury Park when she was just a toddler. This sparked an obsession with pop music that never left her.

It all comes from impersonating The Spice Girls and Gabrielle, she jokes. I did little concerts in my room for my mum and her friends. My mums quite arty; shed get all these lamps and shine them up to make one big spotlight. Theyd all sit on the bed.

When Adele was a pre-teen she would line up for hours in order to be part of the audience of the Saturday morning show CD:UK, a British music television show. She also listened to the Top 40 while working Sunday shifts at her aunts Haringey caf. She even went so far as to fake an eye injury at school in order to wear a sequined eye-patch in honor of British singer Gabrielle. During the late 1990s, Adele went through the requisite American rock phase, listening to bands like Korn and Slipknot, but not quite fitting in with the subculture. She looked to a few other influences, including the Spice Girls, Jeff Buckley and Will Young.

A pivotal moment during Adeles school days happened in 2002, when she was out shopping with friends at the record store HMV. There, she spotted a two-for-one promotion on jazz CDs. I bought Ella Fitzgerald and Etta James, she recalls. It changed my life... it was so heartfelt compared with the music Id been listening to.

Unsurprisingly, Adeles mother an important influence in her early life. When talking about Penny in interviews, its easy to see the level of admiration, respect and affection Adele has for her mother, Shes the calmest person, really strong and clever and beautiful. She is so slender, like this Turkish Greek goddess shes tan with big black eyes. And she is so easily moved. A real emotional person.

At fourteen, Adele auditioned for the London School for Performing Arts & Technology (commonly known as the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology) in Croydon. The BRIT School is noted for its successful and highly visible alumni, including Ace and Vis, Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Imogen Heap and Katy B. It is one of the only performing arts schools in the world that is totally free to attend, although their selection process is rather stringent. As luck would have it, Adele ended up in the same class as singers Leona Lewis and Jessie J.

An arts school wasnt always in the cards for Adele, or so she thought. If I hear someones from stage school Id think they were a dickhead, and I know it might make me sound like that, the singer admits. But it had free rehearsal rooms and free equipment and I was listening to music all day, every day, for years. The music course was really wicked. There was no dancing or anything like that. No jazz hands.

The BRIT School is known for nurturing young artists and has a strong reputation for spawning influential artists in the music industry. According to the BRIT School principal Nick Williams, The secret is in the nature of the school its a very creative institution. He explains that the students are encouraged to be who they actually are: Were not trying to mold them or work to some kind of preordained model of what is a successful singer.

Adele claims that it was her influence at the BRIT School that provided her with the guidance and inspiration to become a singer. I hate to think where Id have ended up if I hadnt gone to the BRIT School. Its quite inspiring to be around seven hundred kids who want to be something rather than seven hundred kids who just want to get pregnant so they get their own flat, she said candidly.

Adeles second year at the BRIT School was marked by Shingai Shoniwa, currently a vocalist with The Noisettes, who moved in to the apartment next door. Shes an amazing singer, Adele recalls. I used to hear her through the walls. Id go round and wed jam and stuff like that. Just hearing her and her music really made me want to be a writer and not just sing Destinys Child songs. It was in this South London apartment where Adele wrote much of her future album, 19.

Shoniwa looks fondly on those days, saying, We were neighbors for years in West Norwood. We lived right next door to each other on top of the Co-op [a store]... Awesome days. She had a piano; I had a drum kit. We always used to jam.

Adele graduated from the BRIT School in 2006. Just four months after her graduation, Adele published two songs in the fourth issue of PlatformsMagazine.com, an online arts publication. She had also recorded a three-song demo for a class project, which a friend promptly posted on Myspace. The demo attracted a lot of attention, resulting in a phone call from the music label XL Recordings. The independent British label is also known for signing other well known acts, including the White Stripes, Dizzee Rascal and Radiohead.