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Adele · S4 E7
The Voice
A vocal cord haemorrhage. Emergency surgery. Months of silence. The question nobody wants to ask: will she ever sound the same?
October 2011. Adele is mid-tour when blood fills her throat during a performance. The diagnosis is a vocal cord haemorrhage, and the prescription is the one thing she cannot do: stop singing.
Adele, "Rolling in the Deep" (live at the 54th Grammy Awards, February 2012). Her first public performance after vocal cord surgery. The entire music industry is watching to hear if the voice survived. It did. She wins six Grammys that night.
Rolling in the Deep (Grammy Comeback)
This Grammy performance is not about the song. It's about the voice. Every person in the Staples Center knows what Adele has been through: the haemorrhage, the surgery, the months of silence, the uncertainty about whether she would ever sing again. When she opens her mouth and the first note comes out intact, the room exhales. The vocal is slightly different from the album version. There's a new carefulness in how she handles the sustained notes. She's not belting recklessly anymore. She's protecting something she nearly lost.
The Haemorrhage
In October 2011, Adele suffers a vocal cord haemorrhage and is forced to cancel all remaining tour dates. She undergoes microsurgery on her vocal cords in November 2011 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The procedure is performed by Dr. Steven Zeitels, one of the world's leading voice surgeons. She does not sing publicly for four months.
“"I had to just sit there, not talking, for weeks. Me. Not talking. It was the worst thing that's ever happened to me."”
TAP TO REVEAL: Who performed the surgery that saved Adele's voice?
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
The hospital where Dr. Steven Zeitels performed the microsurgery that saved Adele's voice in November 2011.
Which famous surgeon performed the microsurgery that saved Adele's voice?
Songbird, Fleetwood Mac
From Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (1977). Written and sung by Christine McVie, "Songbird" is a fragile, piano-driven love song about the simplest kind of devotion. In the context of a singer who nearly lost her voice, the title is unbearable. The song is about what a voice can give you when everything else is taken away. It's the quietest track on one of the loudest albums ever made, and it sounds like a prayer for something you're terrified of losing.
Songbird, Fleetwood Mac (1977)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Christine McVie recorded this alone in an empty studio at 3am because she wanted the room to feel as quiet as the song. For a singer who just spent months in silence, unable to make a sound, every word here hits differently.
The Voice
The voice survives, the Grammys are won, and album 21 is the biggest record in the world. But a phone call from the James Bond producers is about to take Adele somewhere she's never been. Season 5: Skyfall.
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