Someone like Adele
The success of Adele is baffling. Her second album, 21, has sold more than 10 million copies. Staggering considering nobody buys albums anymore - is the Adele fan its own separate beast? It would seem that's possible.
Last night I watched Adele: Live at the Royal Albert Hall. I do this so that you don't have to.
Understand, I'm not just arriving at the Adele phenomenon now. I was in on the ground floor with this. Her debut record, 19, arrived for me to review. I thought it was okay. I liked the fact that her voice was a bit wobbly - she seemed to take risks. I thought the songwriting was naive and, at times, close enough to amateur-hour. But there seemed to be some thought; possibly some passion...and then it seemed Adele was (largely) forgotten. Don't get me wrong, 19 was no dud - but it didn't suggest a huge future for Adele - she was just one of the crop. You could believe she was different - something special, something not so contrived, but that's for you to believe. Spoiler-alert: if you actually do believe this, you're quite wrong.
But then 21 was released and Rolling in the Deep was a hit and Someone Like You - with its trite, trying-so-hard-to-not-be-contrived live performances - especially the one from The Brits. These songs sold the album.
Two songs. And now 10 million copies of an album sold.
Aretha Franklin, The Queen of Soul, was also releasing music at 19 and 21. In fact she released her first album at 14 - and the album I raved about (in the link above - The First 12 Sides) is collected from material she recorded aged 17 and 18.
But back to Adele - specifically this new live DVD/CD of her recent Royal Albert Hall Show. The blurb that came with the DVD tells me that "this is the first time fans will be able to hear all Adele's hits and best-loved songs on one CD". Well that's not true. Really, she only has two hits - the two mega-hits mentioned above. And they are on the same CD. You don't have to work too hard to see the label rubbing its hands together at the thought of more cash coming in from this live album/film.
Someone who runs a New Zealand music label not connected with XL (Adele's label) even tried to tell me that the success of Adele was "such a positive for the industry". I am always disappointed with this logic. And this is probably what bugs me most about the success of Adele; that people desperate to stay involved in the music industry are hitching their wagons and going along for the ride - and then they throw on that token caveat: it's not personally my cup of tea; or something along those lines.
What a copout.
I would like to be able to say that I have no issues with someone like Adele. That I wish only the best for someone l! ike her. But I can't say that. Adele is to music as Bridget Jones's Diary is to cinema and/or literature. Watching the live DVD you see the fans caught up - spellbound - by this bland, crude performance.
Adele is not a very good singer. On the debut album that was almost endearing - now it's just plain insulting. Being told by people with no clue that she is "amazing" is also insulting. This live DVD shows her to be frequently flat and her pitch is, well, to put it politely, wavy. Her songwriting is pedestrian (again, I'm trying to be kind here) and the covers that pepper her set show her to be giftless in the art (and aim) of interpretation. Bob Dylan's To Make You Feel My Love is a dirge; even more so than the versions by Dylan and Billy Joel. To just pick a song that you think has a strong message is not enough. And that seems to be Adele's trick, over and again.
She gushes about The Cure but when performing Lovesong she seems to forget any of the tension and release - this is true of most of her singing, in fact. It's just one big vowel movement, one long bellow of phoned-in faux-emotion.
But there are calls in her defence that at least what she's offering is "real music" - at least she's actually singing; she's not playing with Autotune; she's not stealing and sampling, she's writing a lot of her own material. And singing from her heart.
This is my issue with the Adele fan-base - if I can be permitted to address all 10 million of you.
Do not suggest that there's been a lowering of the overall musical standard and so - with the goalposts shifted - Adele represents something close enough to hopeful.
You are insulting the artist and the industry. You are insulting yourself. But most distressingly, you are insulting me.
That was the point I was making when I brought Adele into my piece about Aretha Franklin. You think that there's no decent music being made, go back and find some of the great music you ! haven't yet experienced. Don't just settle for the thing that's being rubbed in under your nose; the thing that you're being told is devilishly not-mainstream but totally is.
And the most annoying thing for me about seeing the Adele DVD was hearing her talk between songs. No humility, no filter, no wisdom. Just a hundred miles an hour - like Vicky Pollard from Little Britain. And the fans would have you believe that Adele is wise and thoughtful and that she wears her heart on her sleeve and tells you how she is feeling - it's in her songs and her songs are her life.
What a load of marketing.
Adele spends her banter-moments telling the audience how great the songs are before she's performed them. Cut to audience members looking on adoringly in a demented 2 Girls 1 Cup kind of expression. Cut to audience members caught filming Adele on their iPhone even though they're at a live taping. What's the bet they buy the DVD and take a shot of themselves on screen filming the concert on their phone then share that on the Adele-Fan Facebook page?
I was baffled that Adele had the biggest-selling album of the year before I watched her money-shot DVD. Now I'm just gobsmacked. Insulted. Enraged.
And what about the story that she had to cancel her tour; was losing her voice. Maybe her label, which has made millions off her, could pay for some singing lessons. They're clearly needed. I know people that have been hacking it out on the pub-circuit for 30 years, week in/week out; they know how to sing. They don't need an operation because they're straining and not singing properly; they've done the work - they know how to look after their instrument. They're not green.
Her fans will tell you that they believe she has sung herself hoarse because s! he cares so much and tries so hard. It's that real to them, dammit!
Her fans will tell you that they believe it all - and that's what they're buying; that 21 is a break-up album. It's about a real guy, don't you know; it's what really happened. And she sings her heart out. And she puts it all on the line.
Songwriters do not need to be documentarians - they should be great short-story writers, if anything. And there's more truth to me in a Burt Bacharach or Beatles or Beach Boys love song - or breakup song - than in anything Adele has borrowed, bludgeoned or barfed up.
Songwriters should let the song do the talking - not themselves.
Songwriters should write more than just an ostinato that feels like a 10-year-old's piano-practice piece.
Adele is no different from a reality TV star - having her moment because we are allowing it. How sad that 10 million of us bought into it. Well, 10 million of you. I think whatever she had on album number one, and it wasn't really a lot in the scheme of things, has been sold down the river rather swiftly. This big, loud, brash album is just a bunch of screeching cleverly wrapped up as a modern soul album. Sold, perhaps, to someone like you.
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