{"id":3380,"date":"2011-08-16T00:58:46","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T07:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3380"},"modified":"2011-08-16T01:00:17","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T08:00:17","slug":"adele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/adele\/","title":{"rendered":"ADELE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

ADELE<\/h1>\n

For a British singer coming into her voice, a bad habit leads to a great discovery<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Smoking is bad for your health, but it can be good for your musical education\u2014just ask Adele. During her\u00a0U.S. tour following her breakthrough 2008 album, 19<\/em>, the Grammy-winning British singer wound up spending a lot of time with her Nashville-based bus driver. \u201cI used to have to smoke at the front of the bus, and I would stay up there with him for a 10-hour drive sometimes,\u201d she explains. \u201cHe was playing all this amazing country music that he was born and bred on\u2014but that I\u2019d never heard of.\u201d She found new inspirations to join her idols, Etta James and Billie Holiday. There was Garth Brooks, Alison Krauss, Lady Antebellum\u2014and especially Wanda Jackson. \u201cOh god, I love her!\u201d declares Adele (n\u00e9e<\/em> Adkins). \u201cShe has this feistiness that you\u2019re either\u00a0born with or you\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Adele returned to London, she sequestered herself in her flat listening to country music\u2014and another intriguing new influence. \u201cI really got into hip-hip,\u201d she says. \u201cI was truly fascinated by Jay-Z, Nas and Kanye West and how they manipulate words and make the most mundane thing so exciting you almost explode.\u201d<\/p>\n

She brought elements of all her new musical interests into her new sophomore set, 21<\/em>. Like 19<\/em>, the album\u2019s songs are built around a crumbling relationship, rendered all the more heartbreaking by her incandescent tenor. Having written most of 19<\/em> solo, for 21<\/em> she collaborated with tunesmiths like Dan Wilson and OneRepublic\u2019s Ryan Tedder. \u201cI embraced the fact that I can\u2019t do it on my own anymore,\u201d she says. \u201cNow I find that certain\u00a0 types of writers or producers bring out\u00a0different sides of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the producers who contributed to 21<\/em> was Rick Rubin, whose reputation for working from a distance worried her at first. \u201cI started panicking, because I had no idea what I wanted to sound like yet,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI started thinking, \u2018Hell, I\u2019ve picked a bloody producer who\u2019s not going to be there.\u2019 And then he proved everyone wrong. He was more involved than anyone else I\u2019ve ever worked with.\u201d Rubin left her with an important lesson: All that matters is the song. \u201cThe kind of glitter that goes on a record after it\u2019s done is completely irrelevant to Rick,\u201d she says. \u201cThe video, the styling, the remixes, he couldn\u2019t care less. In a world that is so obsessed with trends, it was an honor to make\u00a0a record like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Melinda Newman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ADELE For a British singer coming into her voice, a bad habit leads to a great discovery Smoking is bad for your health, but it can be good for your musical education\u2014just ask Adele. During her\u00a0U.S. tour following her breakthrough 2008 album, 19, the Grammy-winning British singer wound up spending a lot of time with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[2391,1059,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3380"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3383,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions\/3383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}