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Adele · S1 E4
The Spice Girls and Ella Fitzgerald
Two obsessions that don't belong together: bubblegum pop and jazz standards. Both shape the voice before she knows what the voice is for.
1997, a living room in South London. An eight-year-old Adele is performing the entire choreography to "Wannabe" on the sofa, convinced she will grow up to be the sixth Spice Girl.
Adele, "River Lea" (live at Glastonbury, 2016). Named after the river that flows through Tottenham, this song is about the parts of your past that run through everything you become, whether you want them there or not. Co-written with Danger Mouse, the production owes more to The Black Keys than to any Adele ballad.
River Lea
Co-written with Danger Mouse, "River Lea" opens with a distorted vocal loop before a sharp beat and electric guitar pull the song into something darker and more textured than most of 25. The production owes more to Danger Mouse's work with The Black Keys than to any Adele ballad. The River Lea is a real waterway that runs through Tottenham and East London, and Adele uses it as a metaphor for everything her childhood put into her blood, whether she wanted it there or not.
Wannabe
Adele is eight years old when the Spice Girls take over the world in 1996. She knows every dance, every lyric, every personality. What the Spice Girls give her isn't musical sophistication. It's permission: five working-class girls from England proving that you don't need money or connections to become the most famous people on the planet.
Sources
Adele, i-D Magazine, November 2015
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Adele first discover Ella Fitzgerald?
How did Adele discover Ella Fitzgerald's music?
Lovesong
From 21 (2011). A cover of The Cure's 1989 original, one of the bands Penny played constantly in the flat. By recording a Cure song on her second album, Adele closes a loop that started in childhood: the music her mother loved, filtered through her own voice. The arrangement strips away Robert Smith's guitars and replaces them with piano and strings, turning a new wave track into something that sounds like it was always meant to be a ballad.
Lovesong, Adele (2011)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Robert Smith wrote these words for his wife in 1989, the year after Adele was born. Penny played the original in their Tottenham flat. Now her daughter sings it back to the world.
The Influences
The girl has the influences, the ear, and the voice. Now she needs a neighborhood to write about. West Norwood, South London, is about to give her every lyric she'll ever need.
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