Adele has opened up about how her rise to global superstardom affected her life. In an interview in Observer Music, a magazine to be published with the newspaper on 15 November, she talks of how the success of her last album, 21, and the promotional work around it left her feeling dislocated, as if it were “almost like an out-of-body experience”.
21 became the bestselling album of the last decade after its release in February 2011, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, reaching No 1 around the world. It stayed in the US top 10 for 80 weeks, and spent 23 weeks at No 1 in the UK. It is the bestselling record of the millennium in the UK, with sales of 4.74m.
“It’s very easy to give in to being famous,” Adele says in the interview. “Because it’s charming. It’s powerful. It draws you in. Really, it’s harder work resisting it. But after a while I just refused to accept a life that was not real.”
Instead of becoming a professional celebrity, Adele says, she retreated into family life, turning down scores of offers for product endorsements and lucrative private appearances. The biggest change to her life, she says, is that she now shops at Waitrose.
Adele’s third album, 25, is released on 20 November. Its first single, Hello, has already started smashing chart records. In its first week on release, it sold 1.1m downloads, nearly doubling the seven-day record of 600,000, held by Flo Rida since 2009 for his song Right Round. Its video set a new record for most views on Vevo, with 27.7m views in its first 24 hours, surpassing Taylor Swift’s record – for Bad Blood – by 7.6m. Records were broken on Spotify, too, where Hello was streamed 47.5m times in its first week.
The industry expectation is that 25 will be a commercial success to match 21, and perhaps even surpass it if the performance of Hello is a guide. Most surprisingly, it has come via the route of an independent label. Adele is signed to XL in the UK, which is part of the Beggars Group of independent labels. In the US, XL has a partnership with Columbia, part of the Sony group, to release her music.
The revenue generated by Adele’s sales has been enormous. In 2011-12, the first full financial year of its release, XL declared an operating profit of $67m (£44m). But the profits from a hit that big do not solely benefit label and artist. Beggars Group chairman Martin Mills told the New York Times at the time: “When you sell that many records everyone makes money. Not just Adele and the label, but distributors, retail, everyone.”
