British Soul Queen Adele Finds Her Voice Again
British soul singer Adele, who shot to fame with her album "21", is to make her live comeback at the Grammy Awards on Sunday after a throat problem threatened to wreck her stellar career.
Despite being out of action since October, she has continued to win plaudits and will showcase the voice that has caused so much concern at the ceremony in Los Angeles, where she is in contention for six awards.
Husky tones, retro rhythms and raw emotional honesty have helped the 23-year-old from a modest background in London sell more than 12 million copies of "21" worldwide since its release in January 2011.
In terms of Grammy nods, Adele is second only to rapper Kanye West, who has seven nominations at the U.S. music industry's top awards.
After throat surgery silenced her for months, Adele, with her trademark bouffant hair, generous figure, liberal swearing and raucous Cockney laugh, is thrilled to be back.
"It's an absolute honor to be included in such a night," she said.
"For it to be my first performance in months is very exciting and of course nerve-racking, but what a way to get back into it all," she added.
Four months ago, the singer-songwriter had announced, "heartbroken", that she was cancelling her sold-out U.S. tour due to a hemorrhage she likened to a "black eye" on her vocal cord.
"Singing is literally my life," she wrote on her blog.
"It's my hobby, my love, my freedom and now my job. I have absolutely no choice but to recuperate properly and fully, or I risk damaging my voice forever."
Despite her voice and soul-baring songs, luck played a helping hand in her rise to fame.
In late 2008 she performed on the U.S. television show "Saturday Night Live" on which the then conservative darling Sarah Palin also appeared.
Thanks to Palin, the show had its highest audience in 14 years and the effect on sales of Adele's first album, "19", was immediate.
"The album was 14th on iTunes," her manager, Jonathan Dickins, told the BBC, explaining that the next day, "I got up at 6:00am to get a plane back to London. The album was suddenly eighth. I got off the plane and got home and the album was first. That was huge, absolutely huge."
Adele won the best new artist and the best female pop vocal performance gongs at the 2009 Grammy Awards.
She is now the first living artist since The Beatles in 1964 to have had two top five hits in the British singles and albums charts simultaneously.
People who do not normally buy music are buying her records, The Guardian newspaper noted, including her hits "Someone Like You", "Rolling in the Deep" and "Set Fire to the Rain".
"21" topped the 2011 year-end charts in Britain, the U.S. Billboard 200, and other countries including Canada, Australia, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Despite her success, Adele remains unaffected and close to her roots.
She has been unflappable in the face of a controversy over her weight, after haute couture designer Karl Lagerfeld suggested that she's "a little too fat."
The British singer's reply, to U.S. television in an interview airing this weekend, is that she refuses to conform to the industry's standard of what a pop music diva should look like.
"I've never seen magazine covers... music videos and been like 'I need to look like that to be a success,'" the British singer told CBS television.
"I don't want to be some skinny Minnie... I don't want people confusing what it is that I am about," she said.
"I'm just writing love songs. I'm not trying to be pop. I'm not trying to be jazz. I'm not trying to be anything. I'm just writing love songs and everyone loves a love song."
Born Adele Adkins to a single mother in the gritty north London district of Tottenham, she attended the city's BRIT School in Croydon, which has turned out stars including Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis and Katie Melua.
Despite the similarities in training and soulful tones, she has not gone down the road of Winehouse in spiraling into the drugs and the drink that cost her her life.
"I go home and my best friend laughs at me, rather than going to a celebrity-studded party to rub shoulders with people who know me but who I don't know.
"I am Z-list when it comes to that shit," she told the US music magazine Billboard in December.
Paul Rees, editor of the British music magazine Q, said: "It's good to see a performer and an artist who is, in that sense, normal. That's very refreshing.
"The dangers of this level of success are obvious. In the modern age, the turnover of people is so quick.
"I would suspect that, as time goes, the record sales won't be as big.
"But I think she will have a career that is a long-standing one, because she is good enough to do that."
Source: Agence France Presse
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