Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Adele · S2 E6
Jonathan Dickins
Her manager from the very beginning. The quiet operator behind every album, every tour, every silence. He is still there.
2006, a phone rings in a management office in London. On the other end is an eighteen-year-old singer who has just been offered a deal by XL Recordings and needs someone to tell her what to do next.
Adele, "My Same" (live at the iTunes Festival, 2011). Written about her BRIT School friend Laura Dockrill, it's a portrait of two completely different people who somehow fit together perfectly. Acoustic guitar, a playful vocal delivery, and a lyric that reads like a list of contradictions between two friends.
My Same
"My Same" is one of the lightest songs in Adele's catalogue: acoustic guitar, a playful vocal delivery, and a lyric that reads like a list of contradictions between two friends. There are no heartbreak power notes, no orchestral swells. Just Adele cataloging the differences between herself and someone she loves anyway. The simplicity is the point: the best partnerships don't need drama to work.
The Quiet Operator
Jonathan Dickins becomes Adele's manager before she releases a single song. He runs September Management in London and will remain by her side through every album, every tour, every silence, and every comeback. In an industry where artists cycle through managers like seasons, Dickins has been there since day one.
Sources
Adele, Vogue UK, November 2021
TAP TO REVEAL: What is Jonathan Dickins' strategy that made Adele the biggest-selling artist of her generation?
What is Jonathan Dickins' core management strategy that made Adele the biggest-selling artist of her generation?
Can I Get It
From 30 (2021). A driving, guitar-led track that sounds like Adele demanding something for the first time. In the context of a manager who has spent nearly twenty years saying 'no' to everyone else on her behalf, this is the energy behind closed doors: direct, confident, uncompromising. Dickins made sure the world only got Adele on Adele's terms.
Can I Get It, Adele (2021)
Read the lyrics while you listen. The most rock-leaning song on 30, and the one that sounds least like the ballad singer the press always describes. This is the Adele that exists in meetings, in negotiations, in the room where decisions get made.
Jonathan Dickins
She has the label, the manager, and the songs. Now she needs to leave the building that made her. Next episode: graduation day at the BRIT School, and the moment Adele walks out with a record deal that none of her classmates saw coming.
0 XP earned this session