English singer-songwriter
Adele (Adkins) rose to prominence in the late 2000s as another songstress of the
British soul-rock revival popularized by Amy Winehouse.
The adolescent Adele
debuted with 19 (2008), mostly
produced by Jim Abbiss, a collection of old-fashioned soul ballads that, mainly,
displayed her impressive vocal register, halfway between contralto and
mezzosoprano, with a smooth melisma a` la Ella Fitzgerald.
The single Chasing Pavements was composed by professional songwriter
and producer Eg White
Sacha Skarbek composed and Mark Ronson produced the jazzy Cold Shoulder
but she composed the piano-based elegy Hometown Glory when she was 16.
She veered towards country and blues music on 21 (2011), ostensibly
a "breakup" album, which became the best-selling album of the year.
It contains her most famous hit, Rolling in the Deep (composed by Paul Epworth),
a rhythm & blues litany in a martial crescendo ,
steeped in both Delta blues and plantation songs;
the piano ballad Someone Like You (composed by Dan Wilson of the
Semisonic);
the synth-tinged melodrama of Set Fire to the Rain (composed by Fraser Thorneycroft-Smith), and
four songs produced by Rick Rubin.
She also sang Skyfall (2012) for a film soundtrack.
25 (2015), another best-selling album,
sculpted by a large cast of producers and songwriters, mainly
contains the ballad Hello (composed by Greg Kurstin of The Bird and The Bee, who also crafted albums by Lily Allen, Sia, Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry),
another huge hit despite being rather trivial,
the aguished piano ballad When We Were Young (written by Tobias Jesso),
the generic, standard dance-pop of Send My Love (composed by Max Martin and Karl "Shellback" Schuster),
and Kurstin's Water Under the Bridge (not too different from Kelly Clarkson's hit Stronger that was also composed by Kurstin).
By the age of 30, she had already sold more than 50 million albums.
30 (2021) is a divorce-themed concept album that was also her most
traditional and often grating pop album, a concoction of
uniformly bland singing and uniformly bland ballads (of which perhaps
I Drink Wine and
Easy on me are the least obnoxious).
