FROM A TO Z

Adele’s first video interview aired yesterday on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 radio show and the singer offered plenty of insight into the story behind what will be the biggest album of the year. The world will be rushing to buy 25 tomorrow. The set, which won’t be available to stream, will undoubtedly propel Adele into the stratosphere as this decade’s superstar after the phenomenal success of its predecessor, 21. So how did it all begin?


Educated at performing arts college The BRIT School, Adele graduated in a talented class that included Florence + the Machine, Marcus Mumford, Laura Marling, Jack Peñate, The Maccabees and Jamie T. XL Records, a U.K. independent run by Richard Russell, invited her into their offices days after leaving school in 2006. A&R man Nick Huggett then signed a deal and hooked her up with manager Jonathan Dickins. Adele told Lowe: “Jonathan made a good cup of tea and made me laugh, and he’s been my manager from day one.”

Months of gigging around East London ensued, before 19, 21, and now 25. The best day of recording her latest set was writing “When We Were Young” with Tobias Jesso Jr. “We’d done the bulk of recording in London, and were nearly there, but not quite; it was missing something,” Adele explained. “So we went to LA for one last push of the album, and [me and Tobias] spoke for five hours, told each other all about our lives, I told him how I was feeling which was summed up in “When We Were Young.” It took a day and a half, him on piano, it was an amazing experience. I will write with him for the rest of my career.”

Adele’s future ambitions are to have a long career in music, like heroes Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand, and staying out of the spotlight is a big part of that. “It’s such a fast moving world that we live in where we feel like we have to tell everyone what we’re doing all the time,” she said. “But that’s not going to help sustain a career. Give everyone everything and what have you got left to give?”

Hear! Hear!