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Adele · S3 E3
The BRITs Critics' Choice
She wins the award before the album is even released. The British press doesn't know what to do with her: she is not indie, not pop, not R&B.
December 2007. A nineteen-year-old singer who hasn't released an album yet receives a phone call telling her she has won the inaugural BRIT Awards Critics' Choice, an award for the artist most likely to break through in the coming year.
Adele, "Daydreamer" (live on Later... with Jools Holland, 2007). Her first major television performance, aired on the BBC around the same time the Critics' Choice announcement was made. Just Adele, an acoustic guitar, and a voice that stops the room. This is what the BRIT Awards panel heard.
Daydreamer
The opening track of 19, "Daydreamer" is built on a fingerpicked acoustic guitar and a vocal that sounds like someone telling a secret. There's no production ambition here, no attempt to fill the room with sound. The entire song rests on the tone of her voice: warm, conversational, and weirdly mature for someone barely out of school. It's the track that made A&R scouts and award panels lean forward and ask: how old is she?
The First Critics' Choice
The BRIT Awards Critics' Choice is a brand new award in 2008, created to spotlight the act expected to have the biggest breakthrough in the coming year. Adele is its first ever winner. She receives the award in December 2007, a full month before 19 is even released. The British press doesn't know what to do with her: she's not indie enough for NME, not pop enough for Radio 1, and not R&B enough for anyone else.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did winning the Critics' Choice do to album pre-orders overnight?
What was special about Adele's BRIT Awards Critics' Choice win in 2008?
At Last, Etta James
From Etta James' At Last! (1960). One of the artists Adele discovered in a local music shop at fourteen, and one of the voices she has cited as a direct influence on her phrasing and emotional delivery. In the context of a nineteen-year-old winning a major award before her debut album drops, the title is perfect: at last, the world is catching up to what the music already knew.
At Last, Etta James (1960)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Etta James recorded this at 22, only a few years older than Adele during the Critics' Choice. The vocal warmth, the restraint, the way the voice carries emotion without oversinging: this is the blueprint Adele has been studying since she was fourteen.
Critics' Choice, 2008
The Critics' Choice puts her name in every newspaper in Britain. But the album still needs to be finished. Next episode: Mark Ronson, Jim Abbiss, and the two producers who pull 19 in completely different directions.
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