I remember a time when I didn’t object to Adele. Working-class in the increasingly posh world of popular music, always pretty but not a glamour girl in a profession where female singers are expected to be hyper-sexualised, she was prized for her voice more than her looks. That I might have referred to that voice as sounding like ‘a moose with the worst case of PMT ever’ is not important; these things are a matter of taste.
Adele’s luxury grief has steadily grown over the years
It feels as if Adele has always been with us; her first album was called 19 and she’s still only 36. Her success has been both rapid and solid; in 2017, she was ranked the richest musician under the age of 30 in the UK; now she has a net worth of £170 million. The best-selling female artist of the 21st century in the UK, she is also the best-selling artist of the 2010s worldwide; awarded the MBE in 2013, in 2014 she was named by young adults outside of the UK as one of the most recognised British cultural icons, alongside the Queen, Shakespeare, Charlie Chaplin and The Beatles. She made it all by herself, in an industry lousy with nepotism.
Why, then, whenever I see her name over the past couple of years do I sigh heavily and think: ‘Put it away, love!’? At first sight, this sentiment doesn’t make sense. Unlike, say, Madonna, she has not actively pursued us down the decades, gamely waving her private parts at us until we could probably pick them out in a police line-up. No, it’s her emotions which Adele exposes us to relentlessly – and what a ‘me-me-me’ monotone they are.
It’s all well and good for an artist in general, and a singer-songwriter in particular, to frack their emotions. But Adele’s are so relentlessly miserable and downbeat that her emoting sometimes seems somewhat Marie Antoinette-ish, now that she lives in Beverly Hills (to escape Seasonal Affective Disorder, of course) with an astonishingly handsome boyfriend, Rich Paul, who is almost as rich as she is. Even her middle name is ‘Blue’! She is weeping all the way to the bank, and will probably be doing so until she finally drops off her perch, our mournful songbird tweeting her song of woe no longer.
Though first identifying as ‘a sad person’ on Desert Island Discs in 2022, Adele’s luxury grief has steadily grown over the years. Not only could her music make a glass eye cry from the beginning; no amount of success could cheer her.
In 2021, she appeared on the cover of Vogue, her journey from chubby London local heroine to fully-fledged Hollywood star, slender and beautiful – ‘opening up about motherhood, anxiety, separation and divorce.’ This was the year she had her fourth album – 30 – released, and it was jam-packed with weapons-grade confessionals: Mutually Assured Depression! It transpired that her divorce had left her ‘devastated’ and ’embarrassed’, leading to ‘an intense few weeks of bed-bound anxiety’ before she poured it all into her work. Spillage alert!
The worst song on 30 was surely ‘My Little Love’ which featured the voice of Adele’s nine-year-old son:
‘Mummy’s been having a lot of big feelings recently…like, um, I feel a bit confused/And I feel like I don’t really know what I’m doing/I wanted you to have everything I never had/I’m so sorry if what I’ve done makes you feel sad/I love your dad ’cause he gave you to me/You’re half me and you’re half daddy/Mama’s got a lot to learn/I’m having a bad day, I’m having a very anxious day/I feel very paranoid, I feel very stressed/I have a hangover, which never helps…I just wanna watch TV and curl up in a ball…’
I want that for Adele, too, truly I do – but, somehow, she soldiers on making these execrable records. Last year, she told the Hollywood Reporter:
‘I think I’m an incredibly sad person and I think I’m a real empath and I’m a real feeler.’
Adele has been extremely lucky to have achieved the level of success she has
O, empaths: those secular saints who presume to be everything narcissists are not but are simply narcissists without the fun bit; moody, needy, clingy wet blankets who anyone with a bit of spirit would gnaw off their own arm to get away from. Like being ‘a sad person’ or being ‘highly sensitive’, being an empath can cover a multitude of sins.
Adele has cancelled or postponed multiple shows, leaving masses of fans broke and stranded. But don’t have a go at her for unprofessionalism, she’s an empath! I daresay that all the excuses she made were valid, but there’s such a nagging theme of how much she hates being famous and how sad her life is that makes it all too easy to believe that keeping her fans happy isn’t her priority; very much in the Meghan Markle manner of great privilege without any foreseeable service.
So the news that Adele is to take a ‘big break’ from music after a two-year weekend residency in Las Vegas doesn’t altogether come as a surprise, especially after she told the German broadcaster ZDF ‘Everything makes me angry. Absolutely everything. I miss everything about before I was famous — I think probably being anonymous the most…the fame side of it I absolutely hate.’
Though I’m not the greatest fan of Taylor Swift’s music, I couldn’t help comparing their vastly differing attitudes to fame. Taylor Swift is totally upfront about how she has chased success in her chosen arena from an early age; Adele behaves as if it was some sort of freak accident that she became famous, despite having sung from the age of four and signed her first recording contract while a teenager straight out of – ahem – stage school.
Like Adele, Swift found success at 19; unlike Adele, she makes life as a modern woman look exciting and challenging rather than one endless roundabout of binge-eating and wine-crying. It’s not just Adele’s contemporaries who make her attitude seem somewhat shabby; regard Kylie, cancer survivor, greatest fan of her fans, trooper whose request for her dressing room at Top Of The Pops was generally just ‘a kettle’. A recent Variety review of her Las Vegas residency singled out her thankfulness to still be doing what she loves at the age of 52:
Of course rich people like Adele are allowed to be sad
‘Minogue beamed while the crowd cheered her arrival. It marked the first of many moments of seemingly sincere gratitude, underscoring her reputation as one of the most approachable pop divas. Even on her eighteenth performance of this particular set, she exuded a clear joy on stage, an appreciation to those in attendance not just for joining her in the room but for helping make those songs so popular for so long.’
Adele has been extremely lucky to have achieved the level of success she has. In 2011, the New York Daily News suggested that the success of British female artists in the USA could be down to the death of the unique Amy Winehouse; as Keith Caulfield of Billboard starkly put it, ‘Because of Amy, or the lack thereof, the marketplace was able to get singers like Adele, Estelle and Duffy.’
Yes, of course rich people like Adele are allowed to be sad. But at a time when so many people are unhappy because of their lack of money, there’s something repulsive about a really, really rich person ceaselessly bleating about the abject misery of their lives while being paid millions to do the thing they love for a living.
So fill your boots with anonymity, Adele; you have delighted us long enough. I wish you success in your private life; far more remarkable female singers than you have semi-retired gracefully – Kate Bush and Sade come to mind – only popping up once in a while to celebrate their longevity and their fans’ enduring love. Change the record, love, and do cheer up; it might never happen; the next comeback, that is. But despite her protestations, I fear that this is not the last we have heard from Adele; let’s brace ourselves for the fifth album – probably imaginatively entitled 40 – in which she tells us one more time that it really is the most ghastly thing imaginable to be beautiful, beloved, famous and mega-rich.
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