Last night, a 23-year-old girl from north London swept the board at the Grammys – winning all six of the categories in which she was nominated. She has achieved extraordinary success at a time when the music industry seems to be dying on its feet . In fact, she has sold three times as many records as the far more image-savvy Lady Gaga.
She may not have 47 million followers on Twitter or treat her life like performance art, but Adele has a quality that cannot be manufactured. Adele has Authenticity – with a capital A.
Neil McCormick, music critic at the Telegraph, writes: “Everything about Adele is authentic because she is her own creation. She writes her own songs, and this is crucial to the emotion she invests in them. Her voice is fantastically appealing and compelling but it is a natural voice that she has developed in a highly personal way.”
Like Amy Winehouse, Adele is a graduate of the Brit School of Performing Arts. But she told McCormick when he interviewed her in 2008 that she had only gone to one singing lesson at the school, and quickly decided not to do any more because “they made me think about my voice too much”.
It seems as if she absolutely trusted her innate gift and what is unique to her, and resisted any attempts to have her talent polished in a way that didn’t feel right. Her presence, her soulfulness is what sells. People get that she is real.
Her album, 21, struck a deep chord with its songs about heartbreak – everyone can identify with that. When she is attacked for being “a bit fat” by fashion designers who should know better, she simply says: “I represent the majority of women and I’m proud of that.”
She rarely plays the promotional game and seems to have her feet firmly planted on the ground. When she won the Grammy for Album of the Year, she simply said: “Mum – girl done good.” You can’t imagine her getting lost in addictions like the sadly departed Amy and Whitney.
So what lessons can we learn from Adele’s success? We can’t all be great singers but we all have something to offer the world that is uniquely ours. And whatever that is, it can only be accessed through our authentic self – that part of us that is beyond ego that knows what our gifts are and how to use them.
I’d like to think that the Age of Consumer Consumption is coming to an end and a new Age of Authenticity is under way – and I can’t think of a better poster girl right now than Adele Adkins.
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