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Adele · S1 E7
The Audition
She applies to the BRIT School for Performing Arts. The interview changes everything.
The numbers stop making sense. Album 21 sells 31 million copies worldwide, spends 24 weeks at number one in the US, and becomes the biggest-selling album of the 2010s. Adele is twenty-three years old.
Skyfall -- Adele. The James Bond theme that wins the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2013. A cinematic, orchestral performance that proves her voice can fill any context, from a bedroom in West Norwood to the world's biggest film franchise.
Skyfall
Co-written with Paul Epworth, "Skyfall" channels the classic Bond theme tradition while sounding unmistakably like Adele. The arrangement opens with a single piano note before strings, brass, and a full orchestra build around her vocal. Listen for how she handles the final chorus: the orchestra surges, but Adele pulls her voice back slightly, letting the melody sit just beneath the wall of sound rather than competing with it. That restraint, choosing to be the stillness at the centre of the storm, is the same instinct she learned from Ella Fitzgerald records as a child. The song wins the Oscar, the Grammy, the Golden Globe, and the Brit Award.
TAP TO REVEAL: What medical crisis nearly ended Adele's career before 21 reached its peak?
The Record Breaker
Album 21 is released on January 24, 2011 and proceeds to break nearly every sales record in the modern music industry. It sells 31 million copies worldwide, spends 24 consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and becomes the first album since 1999 to sell over three million copies in a single year in the US. At the 2012 Grammys, Adele wins six awards including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year.
21 By the Numbers
Bonus Listening: My Same
Written about her BRIT School friend Laura Dockrill, a poet and author. The first song in Adele's catalogue that is not about romance. A playful portrait of how two completely different people can become inseparable, and a reminder that the girl behind all those heartbreak anthems started out writing about friendship.
At the 2012 Grammy Awards, how many awards did Adele win in a single night?
A girl from a council flat in Tottenham has become the biggest-selling artist of a generation. But the voice, the heartbreak, and the records are just the beginning. Season 2 picks up where the records leave off: the silence, the comeback, and everything that comes after fame.
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To be continued
Season 2: The BRIT School
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