Adele: chasing pavements and Grammys

A soulful British newcomer explodes onto the scene—with a little help from Sarah Palin

By Andy Hermann

Metromix

[Note: this story was originally published prior to the Grammy Awards on Feb. 8. Adele won two Grammys, for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best New Artist.]

When Adele Adkins found out she had been nominated for four Grammys, including Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist, the first thing she did was wake up her mum.

“My phone started buzzing, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, Mum, I think I might have been nominated for a Grammy,’” the 20-year-old Londoner recalls.

Adele spent the next several hours trying to confirm all the phone calls and text messages by trawling Google for Grammy news. “I was looking up to see how many Leona Lewis would get, as well,” she explains. “I’m the biggest Leona fan.”

Whether she wins any Grammys or not, this up-and-coming singer-songwriter has already made her mark—especially in England, where she’s already won the coveted Critics’ Choice honor at the BRIT Awards and sold over half a million copies of her debut album, “19.” Success came slower for her in America, but she finally broke through last October with an electrifying performance on “Saturday Night Live” that—thanks to another of that episode’s guests, Sarah Palin—was seen by some 17 million people.

Just before her first major headlining tour of the U.S., Adele called us from New York to discuss the Grammys, the unusual title of her best-known song (“Chasing Pavements”) and the incessant comparisons to other soulful British singers (Duffy, Amy Winehouse) that have followed her for her entire career.

Congratulations on your Grammy nominations.
Thank you very much.

Have you written your acceptance speech yet?
No, I don’t really feel the need. I’d love to win one, but I feel like I won anyway by being nominated. If I prepare, I’ll just have a heart attack and get really frightened. If I was to win one, hopefully my speech won’t be as bad as the BRIT Award one.

What was your BRIT Award speech like?
Well, I was drunk, and I went on [and on]. I hate speeches, I think they’re rubbish.

Well, at least you’ve had a little practice at this point. Is “Chasing Pavements” a common figure of speech in England? Or is it something you made up for the song?
It’s something I made up. [Laughs] It doesn’t really make sense. I ran away from a fight I was in with this boy—the boy the record’s about. And I was running down Oxford Street, which is like our Fifth Avenue. And I remember saying [to myself], “Who are you chasing? Where are you running from? There’s no one here—you’re just chasing the pavement.” And I was like—ding! And I went home and wrote it.

It’s good that you’re not American; over here it would be “Chasing Sidewalks,” which doesn’t sound as good.
Yeah, but I sing that sometimes in the last chorus.

Your biggest break in the U.S. was your performance on “Saturday Night Live.” Were you surprised at what a huge response you got from that one appearance?
I was, yeah. Everyone had kind of been going on about how big the show was, especially because it was during the election period. And Tina Fey’s impression of Sarah Palin was obviously huge, and I’d heard about that in the U.K. But “SNL” isn’t a big deal in the U.K.; I didn’t really know that much about it. People don’t tell me stuff like that, because I get really scared. It doesn’t matter whether I have three people watching or 15 million; I get just as scared.

Did you get to meet Sarah Palin?
I did, yeah. I tried not to, but then she came up to me afterwards. She was really nice. I’m a big Obama supporter, but she was really nice when I met her backstage and she was just saying hello and wasn’t talking politics.

You attended the BRIT School, which has a pretty impressive alumni list: you, Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Kate Nash, the Kooks. What’s its story?
BRIT School is a free performing arts school. It’s different from a stage school; you don’t have to do jazz hands and musical theater. You can if you want to, but I just did music on its own. It’s the only free performing arts school in the whole of Europe. It’s a really amazing place to go.

You kind of blew my image of the BRIT School when you said musical theater was an elective; I was picturing the whole thing like a scene from the movie “Fame.”
Well, you can get that. But in music, we were a bit snobby. We were a bit like, “Nuh-uh! I ain’t wearing leg warmers!”

You and Amy and Leona weren’t doing song and dance numbers together?
Well, actually, Amy and Leona were in musical theater. And Kate Nash was in theater. So they were doing song and dance. [Laughs]

In America, there’s this tendency to always mention you in the same breath with Amy Winehouse and Duffy. Do you get that same thing in England?
In the beginning, we did.

Do you feel like those comparisons are valid?
No. I think they make us a genre because we’re a gender. Because we’re all girls, they think we’re all alike. I’m not bothered; I’m a huge fan of everyone [I’m compared to]. I love Duffy and Amy. In the U.K., it’s kind of dying down now…I mean, Amy’s almost on her third record, and me and Duffy have been out for almost a year now. So it’s not an introductory piece every time…[now] they just talk about—well, usually our private lives, more than anything.

I do think a lot of the comparisons are a bit lazy. To me, your record is a lot less stylized than “Rockferry” or “Back to Black.”
I think my record’s really contemporary. I think Duffy and Amy have got that retro thing going on. I bring maybe an essence of old-school-ness in my voice, because of the artists that I love—like, Etta James is just part of my DNA. But I don’t really want to be doing something old; I want to try and do something new.