After her divorce, the singer turned her moods into songs.
From the first song, “Strangers by Nature”, she takes us to the cemetery, “to flower the grave of my heart”. Romantic piano, low notes and tremolos… Anxious and neurasthenic refrain. Adele “drowns” and “gives up” in “Easy on Me”, the second track on the album, already the most broadcast on the radio in the United States and the most listened to online in England. It does not get better in the ballad dedicated to her son, “My Little Love”, unpacking of emotions on her post-partum blues stroke where “coldness” and “guilt” overwhelm her. Then the cockroach becomes depression. The singer cannot “face the day” and feels “like a ghost” in the syrupy plea “Cry Your Heart Out”. She “loses her mind” and implores: “Without your love I am empty”. The jazzy intoxication of “I Drink Wine” is of no help in “this world that wants to bring us down”. It’s time to take a Xanax. Melancholic apotheosis, the second part of the disc interweaves “darkness”, “coldness” (again), “chaos”, “pain”, “defeat”, “tears” (several times) and the unbeatable trio “loneliness, emptiness and forgiveness “.
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Obviously, the Englishwoman does not have the fry. Installed for eight years in Los Angeles, it is during a stay in London, in 2019, that she wrote the texts of her new opus. Too much fog on the Thames, rain on red bricks, marmalade on toast: Adele’s life, and her music, have taken a turn for the worse. Several months earlier, she left her husband, Simon Konecki, a British boss of an environmental NGO, father of Angelo, their son born in 2012. The divorce caused the star of anxiety attacks, sapping his energy and his willingness to get up in the morning. “I didn’t like who I was […], she explains to the magazine “Rolling Stone”. I was devastated, I was ashamed, I felt like I had failed. “
The end of her marriage also marks the return of her creativity; sadness inspires Adele, depression guides her pen. After six years of absence, she once again has a story to tell and dark moods to contend with. Her intimate experience becomes a musical tale, certainly tearful but “therapeutic”, she says, an opportunity to give news to the public and to build an effective sales pitch. Proven, Adele knows how to find the words that resonate in everyone and proves that moping, in addition to being a universal state, sells. Her torpor provokes empathy, she bet that her fans, like her, can spend hours prostrate in front of “The Sopranos” with their hands in a bag of vinegar crisps. Melo has always been his business and from its inception, his unhappy loves have provided excellent hits. In 2008, on her first album, “19”, the world discovered her impressive vocal abilities on “Tired” and “Many Shades of Black”. Heart broken once again in 2011, with the successful “Rolling in the Deep” and “Someone Like You” from the album “21”, of which she sold 26 million copies. Nostalgia for the time that passes in 2015 on “25” with “Hello” and “When We Were Young” and still sales records. Even for James Bond, in 2012, she watched “the sky crumble” and received the Oscar for best original song.
She says she wants success but is wary of fame
Adele’s spleen dates back to childhood, when she was 10, she believes, the year of her grandfather’s disappearance. In Tottenham, a popular district of Greater London, his mother brought him up alone. The father has taken off, he sinks into alcoholism and does not see his daughter again. Adele first sings in her room, mainly the Spice Girls, the great British success of the 1990s. Adolescence then takes place on the Myspace site, where she posts videos of her first vibratos behind the microphones of open stages in London. And is spotted by a record company, XL Recordings, one of the best and most advanced. She is 18 years old and has a stunning voice. The soul of the 1960s speaks to her abandoned little girl’s heart; she too wants to sing as she cries under puffy buns, her eyes hemmed in black. She admires Amy Winehouse and follows her path, more diva, less destroy. The two share the top spots on the charts. As one withers away, the other displays its plumpness and spontaneity. Her cockney accent, her thunderous laughter, the “fuck” that punctuates almost every one of her statements make Adele a popular character as much as a respected artist.
She says she wants success but is wary of fame. Her assumed ambition and her sudden fortune offer her what she has always dreamed of, the freedom to leave Tottenham, to travel, to shelter her family. In this ascent, Adele decided that there would only be music. She refuses to sell her name and face to brands that offer her advertising contracts and has never staged her family life. In 2013, she left for the United States, seduced “by the light of Los Angeles, the sun, the blue sky”. And through the security of the private residences of Beverly Hills, where she settles with her husband and their son. Her villa, “furnished like an English country house,” she recently unveiled, is next to that of actress Jennifer Lawrence, of whom she has become a friend. The Brit ‘has left the Crown for the kingdom of Hollywood where she drives a Porsche and makes friends with the local “royals”. Rapper Drake is part of his American band, actresses Emma Stone and Cameron Diaz and singer Beyoncé as well.
Adele and filmmaker Xavier Dolan (inset). Unveiled on October 15, the video had 10 million views in six hours. © DR
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In 2019, to recover from her divorce, she made drastic decisions: gluten-free and alcohol-free diet, daily Pilates class, hikes. A Californian reconstruction, where everything is good to reach the holy grail of the new psychology: resilience. Adele even goes through this superstitious ritual of writing down her goals on pieces of paper and then burying them underground. She says, “I tried anything that could ease my anxiety. She travels to Jamaica, Greece, the Arizona desert, to the top of a mountain in Idaho, “wherever they say there is light energy.” Result, she loses 45 kilos and finds a new boyfriend. The lucky one is called Rich Paul, he is an athlete’s agent, especially basketball player LeBron James. But it was her reconciliation with another that completed Adele’s psychic healing. In 2021, she visits her father in England. The man is dying, his daughter wants to reconnect. She says: “Before our last conversation, I don’t think I was aware of the depth of my feelings towards him. “
Back in the United States, appeased, she launched the release of “30”, an announced triumph served by a perfectly controlled promotional campaign. Adele expresses herself little, but well, in the musical reference bimonthly “Rolling Stone”, on television in front of the very empathetic and powerful Oprah Winfrey and, exploit, simultaneously on the covers of the British and American editions of the giant “Vogue”. In her interviews, she talks more about herself than about music, generous in anecdotes about her new existence as a divorced mother. During the morning of France Inter, the only interview granted in France, she drops this sentence: “I am a powerful woman, I work very hard for that. ” A big smile. At last !
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