My sister in law, Carol, and I are fans of Adele, the British singer/songwriter, variously labeled soul, neo-soul, rhythm and blues — a white girl with a soulful sound. We’ve got the songs, “Chasing Pavement”, and “Someone Like You”, etc. but as for tickets to her US tour, looks like we’re out of luck.  All the venues are sold out and the resale tickets go for $200-300 each; looks like a matter of too small venues for such a large talent.

Thing is, doesn’t look like anyone anticipated how popular she would become — except the scalpers, of course.  She’s young, 22, and not well known outside Britain up to now. Her first single “Chasing Pavements” was on the radio, people noticed her voice, but she didn’t have the in-your-face sex appeal of Britney Spears or Katy Perry, nor the wreckage-in-making of someone like Amy Winehouse, good fodder for tabloid press. She’s a big girl, heavy-set, provoking comments on her size, the unlikelihood of music videos with the sultry moves of Rihanna or Fergie from Black Eyed Peas. Her video “Rolling in the Deep” is irresistible; yet, she stays seated in a chair the whole time, no choreography, no bosom, no hips.  The live performance on David Letterman of "Someone Like You" has simply Adele with a man on a piano; the place is absolutely still, unmoving, holding their breath to hear her sing.

Surprise! She has talent, and she has a voice that reaches people, not manufactured emotion.  Maybe not for nothing she got to be a big girl; not an easy life, one without all the supports of upper middleclass upbringing. She’s from Tottenham, a rough area of London, one that is perhaps the most ethnically diverse in Great Britain with high rates of crime and drug abuse. Her father was quoted somewhere that he wasn’t much around, wasn’t much of a father. Or, could be the pain in her music comes from being a fat girl, belittled, put down.  A playwright I know, Sherry Kramer, author of a would-be musical about a fat farm, once told me “Fat people wear their pain on the outside.” 

All I know is Adele reminds me of someone who was once close, the classic “fat girl with such a pretty face”, and I knew her sadness and disappointments pretty well. Maybe, not such a coincidence that Adele has the voice — the anger, the pain, and the power — of a Jennifer Hudson, not because they’re physically big, but because all those things are inside of them.  I can hope, like with Jennifer Hudson, that Adele will slim down to a healthier size, but not for the sake of her music or her happiness.

She is a young girl, still, no older than our children. Her lyrics are not perhaps as mature and developed as her phrasings, and the modulation and verbal "swoops" reminiscent of Chaka Khan or Anita Baker.  The sound of her voice, the timbre, is a gift from God. I sigh, thinking that indeed some talent is God-given; either you have it or you don’t, no matter how much care, craft and experience you may put into your art.  But, of course, it is what you do with your gifts that counts, and Adele has stayed pretty close to the ground, it seems to me.  Maybe there is a benefit in that extra weight, that buffer from a cruel world. Perhaps she’s not as likely to be taken in by the promoters of fame; sucked into the image machine.  I don’t doubt that she’ll have her heart broken again; she’s still so young, and sensitive, it seems.  Funny how we can admire a talent, be jealous even, and still fear for the holder of that talent in a world that exacts such a price for fame.