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Adele · S3 E7
The Grammy
Best New Artist, 2009. She cries on stage. She is twenty years old.
February 8, 2009, the Staples Center, Los Angeles. A twenty-year-old from West Norwood hears her name called for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards and bursts into tears before she reaches the microphone.
Adele, "Chasing Pavements" (live at the 51st Grammy Awards, 2009). Her first Grammy performance, in front of the entire American music industry. The nerves are visible. The voice is not. She sounds like she's been doing this for decades.
Chasing Pavements (Grammy Performance)
Performing "Chasing Pavements" at the Grammys is a different proposition than recording it in a London studio. The arrangement is expanded for the occasion, with a full band and backing vocals that weren't on the album version. But Adele keeps the vocal exactly where it was on the record: intimate, controlled, almost conversational. She doesn't try to fill the Staples Center. She makes the Staples Center come to her.
Best New Artist
Adele wins two Grammys at the 51st ceremony: Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Chasing Pavements." She is twenty years old. She cries through her acceptance speech, thanking her mother and her manager, and later tells reporters she had no idea she was going to win.
TAP TO REVEAL: Who did Adele beat for Best New Artist at the 2009 Grammys?
“"I'm going to cry. Thank you so much. Mum, girl did good!"”
Staples Center, Los Angeles
The venue where a twenty-year-old from a council flat in Tottenham won her first Grammy and cried on international television.
Which British soul singer, often compared to Adele, lost to her in the Best New Artist category at the 2009 Grammys?
Back to Black, Amy Winehouse
From Amy Winehouse's Back to Black (2006). Amy won five Grammys at the same ceremony one year before Adele won her first two. She proved that a young British soul singer could dominate the American music industry. Without that proof of concept, Adele's path to the Grammy stage would have been much harder. Amy opened the door. Adele walked through it.
Back to Black, Amy Winehouse (2006)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Amy's voice on this track is everything Adele admired: raw, unapologetic, and soaked in the kind of soul music they both grew up on in London. The album that made Adele pick up a guitar ended up paving the road to the Grammy stage they both stood on.
Grammy Night, 2009
The girl from Tottenham has a Grammy, a debut album, and the attention of the entire American music industry. But the heartbreak that will define the next decade of her career hasn't happened yet. Season 4 begins with a breakup that produces the biggest album of the 2010s.
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