Dude, You're Getting Adele!

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. This is the twenty-first century, after all. British pop singers do not enjoy success in the United States anymore. Besides, even if you have the best voice among your peers, you need a gimmick to get your music across.

So how does that explain the success of Adele?

When Adele Laurie Blue Adkins released her first album, 19, in the United States in June 2008, few people took notice at the time. But with a little exposure on American television and interest from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences - she won the Best New Artist Grammy in 2009 - more and more people in this country began to listen. The album eventually rose to number ten in America, and her unique contralto voice - delivering honest, heartfelt songs through a set of strong, stylish blue-eyed soul arrangements - established her as a singer to be reckoned with.

Because so much attention has been paid to the highly overrated Lady Gaga - thanks to her unorthodox wardrobe and her obnoxious attitude - it would be impossible for anyone to draw so much notice simply by singing. Yet that's what Adele has done. Consider the statistics of her second album, 21 - nearly five million copies sold in the United States, the most successful digital album of all time in the U.S., only the sixteenth album by a female artist to spend at least nine weeks on top of the Billboard charts, and the first to do so by a British act in 23 years. 21 has also spent a total of thirteen weeks at number one on the Billboard Top Two Hundred, the longest an album has held the top position since 1998. Oh yeah, her singles "Rolling In the Deep" and "Someone Like You," both from 21, are the first two consecutive singles from the same album recorded by a female British recording artist to top the American charts.

This all makes sense once you hear Adele sing. There's not a shred of artifice in her performances, and her devotion to the traditions of British rhythm-and-blues singing are far more honest than many soul recordings to come out of the mother country in the past twenty years. White R&B has always been hard to pull off, and it's even tougher for British performers to make it work. Few have done so. Adele has joined a very elite club that includes veteran performers like Chris Farlowe and the late Dusty Springfield, as well as more recent singers like Joss Stone.

So what's the reason for Adele's success? I'm inclined to guess that Americans had had it with lightweight pop singers being crammed down their throats for so long, and when they found something more substantial, they leapt to embrace it. Adele didn't get off to the best possible start - she had a self-destructive streak that involved drinking and pining for an ex-boyfriend almost cost her a chance to break through in the U.S. - yet ironically, she's been able to pour her emotions into her cathartic singing and songwriting (yes, she's a composer, too) and strike a chord with American audiences . . . as well as with audiences in her homeland. In the United Kingdom, where her success has drawn comparisons to the that of the Beatles, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown called her a "light at the end of the tunnel." He was referring to the persistent British recession, but he could just as easily have been talking about the state of English-language popular music.

Success speaks for itself. And the proverbial sidewalks she's following (or the pavements she's chasing, as she would put it) are definitely leading somewhere.