Thursday, 5 January 2012

"Next time I'll be braver, I'll be my own saviour."


I've just spent the past 60 minutes watching 'Adele Live at the Royal Albert Hall' and despite being a teeny bit drunk, those 60 minutes seem to have had a pretty big effect on me. Even though the film/programme/show ended about half an hour ago, I'm still transfixed by everything that went on during the show.
I know I don't have to explain just how brilliant Adele is. I mean, she has the ability to sum up exactly how you're feeling within the first lyric of one of her songs, is in possession of the world's BEST hair & is the type of person you just want to get drunk with. Whether she's swearing like a fishwife or singing the most honest and refreshing break-up song my generation has ever heard, you can't help but fall in love with Adele.

Now, I don't know about you when I instantly warm to somebody when I hear they're from the same dodgy South-ish London town as me, so when I first heard that Adele lived in Thornton Heath, studied at the infamous BRIT school in Croydon and performed her first gig in Brixton, I knew that this girl had my heart without even hearing her voice. She could have sounded like JLS and I'd still have bought her album, simply because I knew she'd consider Thornton Heath's McDonald's Play Pen as part of her childhood.

There's something so brilliant about her Cockney accent and not just because it reminds me of my relatives. I'm confused as to how she can sing so beautifully yet normally sound like Peggy Mitchell. It's that mystery that surrounds it all; after hearing her speak, you half expect her to scream "GER' OUDA MY PUB!" but you're then serenaded by some of the most mind blowing vocals I've ever heard. You just don't expect it.

The thing about Adele, for me personally, is her honesty. 'Daydreamer' is about a bisexual boy she fell in love with who claimed to feel the same about her, but then, on her 18th birthday, ran off with one of her gay friends. Instead of reminiscing on how horrible that must have felt, she's turned the situation round and made this song into her daydream of how perfect this boy should have been. She doesn't hold back either & if I was this fella who ruined her 18th birthday, I'd have felt extremely guilty the minute I heard her perform this song on Later With Jools Holland...


Besides songs about falling for boys confused about their sexuality, she's penned the most iconic break-up song ever heard since 'You Oughta Know' - Alanis Morissette. There's not one person I know who can honestly say they didn't get a little bit emotional when they heard 'Someone Like You' for the first time and there's a reason for that. EVERYBODY knows what it feels like to lose somebody, whether it be out of choice or not, and for that reason alone, everybody can resonate with Adele's lyrics. There's a reason her performance of this song at the BRIT Awards has 82,830,996 views on YouTube and I'm pretty sure it's not just because of James' Corden's presenting.
"There's nothing quite like the feeling of when you're listening to a song written by someone you don't know, who you've never met, who somehow manages to describe exactly how you felt at a particular moment in your life." - see, James knows what I'm talking about!

Every time you've turned to the tub of Ben & Jerry's after a particularly horrible piece of heartbreak, every night you cried yourself to sleep because of some silly boy who didn't understand how to use his heart (or his head, for that matter) and for every time your heart sunk after seeing said boy, you just know Adele would understand. She'd get it all: the heartbreak, the tears and the comfort eating. 
Her album '21' says it all. It goes through every motion a break-up includes and after putting the CD in the CD player, calling your best girlfriend's over to drink obscene amounts of wine and ending the night crying into a bar of Galaxy, you'll eventually be feeling a little bit closer to human. Imagine Adele doing exactly the same thing, because you know she's going to have copied your every move. Except somewhere in between the 2nd and 4th bottle of wine, she's penned down her feelings just so you can get through your own personal little hell. She's considerate like that.

Call me crazy, but there's got to be something about the girl who spent her first album advance on cigarettes and Burberry. When complimented on her outfit once, her reply was as follows "Burberry...everything. Everything except the earrings...they're Argos." she seems as down to Earth as they come and although some ol' cynical might claim that to be just a publicity stunt, it's hard to imagine somebody so brutally honest within their song writing to ever be a little bit fake. 

Another thing that makes me wish Adele was my best friend is how casual she is about her weight. She's a size 14/16, refuses to stop eating and turn into a stick thin coat hanger and admits that she loves her food. It's about fucking time. In a world where everybody seems to be obsessed with weight, there's no denying that Adele is a breath of much needed fresh air. In interviews, she's always said that the only time she'd worry about her weight is if it interfered with her singing or getting a boyfriend. As we know from both her albums, '19' and '21', this is definitely not the case.

Even without everything mentioned above, there's one moment that has made me fall completely head over heels for Adele, in a completely straight way. During her recent performance at The Royal Albert Hall, Adele covered Bob Dylan's 'Make You Feel My Love'. Before the performance, she dedicated the song to Amy Winehouse stating that she knew how much Amy loved the song and wished she knew how much of an inspiration she had been to her. After a brief emotional moment (what am I on about, the whole performance is bloody emotional!), Adele then demands that EVERYBODY flash their camera or phone light and hold it up to the sky. Refusing to sing until every single person in the audience is doing so, she waits until the whole hall is covered in lights from pieces of technology and says "now look behind you. It's a fucking sky of stars and she can see every single one of them."
It doesn't sound like much but it left me and my Mum speechless and I have to say that takes an awful lot. 

I realise I've rambled on about only half the things I wanted to say but I realised halfway through this post that nothing I can say will properly sum up Adele's magnificence. She can sing, she's not afraid to publicise her heartbreak and she'll happily stand on stage at the Royal Albert Hall and shout "IT'S ROYAL ALBERT FUCKING HALL!" and not give a shit. Before I get started again, I'm going to leave you with this video. After watching this, maybe you'll realise that this blog post doesn't make me crazy, it just makes me human...how can you not love Adele?


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