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Adele · S5 E3
The Oscar
She performs "Skyfall" live at the Academy Awards and wins Best Original Song. Shirley Bassey is in the audience.
February 24, 2013, the Dolby Theatre, Hollywood. The lights go down, a 77-piece orchestra raises their bows, and Adele walks to the microphone to sing "Skyfall" live in front of a billion people, on the same night Shirley Bassey performs "Goldfinger" at the same ceremony.
Adele, "Skyfall" (live at the 85th Academy Awards, 2013). The live performance that precedes the Best Original Song win. A full orchestra, a global audience, and a vocal that has to work without a single retake. She is twenty-four years old and singing for a film franchise that has been running since 1962.
Skyfall (Live at the Oscars)
The Oscars performance is the highest-stakes version of "Skyfall" that exists. No studio tricks, no overdubs, no second take. The orchestra plays live behind her and the vocal has to land perfectly on the first attempt. Listen for how she handles the final note differently from the studio recording: she holds it shorter, choosing precision over drama, because a live orchestra can't follow a singer who improvises. The discipline is invisible but total.
The Night
The 85th Academy Awards is the ceremony celebrating Bond's 50th anniversary. Earlier in the evening, Shirley Bassey performs "Goldfinger" in a gold dress. Then Adele takes the stage and performs "Skyfall" with the same orchestra, in the same room, on the same night. Two generations of Bond theme singers, fifty years apart, sharing a stage.
TAP TO REVEAL: What was Adele terrified of before the Oscars performance?
“"I was so scared I could barely breathe. I puked before I went on. Then the music started and I thought: right, just sing."”
Dolby Theatre, Hollywood
The permanent home of the Academy Awards since 2001, and the stage where a twenty-four-year-old from Tottenham sang a Bond theme to a billion people.
What other Bond theme legend performed at the same Oscar ceremony as Adele in 2013?
Diamonds Are Forever, Shirley Bassey
From the Diamonds Are Forever soundtrack (1971). Shirley Bassey's second Bond theme, and the one that cemented her as the definitive Bond voice. While "Goldfinger" was brassy and bold, "Diamonds Are Forever" is cooler, more controlled, closer to the cinematic restraint Adele brings to "Skyfall." On the night they shared a stage at the Oscars, the torch was passed from one generation of British soul to the next.
Diamonds Are Forever, Shirley Bassey (1971)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Bassey recorded three Bond themes across three decades. The cool detachment of "Diamonds Are Forever" is the closest in tone to what Adele does on "Skyfall": both sound like women who have seen too much to be surprised by anything.
Oscar Night
She has the Oscar, the Grammy, and the biggest-selling album of the decade. Now Adele does something nobody in the industry expects. She disappears. Next episode: a baby named Angelo, a house in Sussex, and two years of complete silence.
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