Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (, [əˈdɛw]; born 5 May 1988) is an English singer and songwriter. After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a record deal with XL Recordings. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 and spawned the UK top-five singles "Chasing Pavements" and "Make You Feel My Love". 19 has sold over 2.5 million copies in the UK and was named in the top 20 best-selling debut albums of all time in the UK. Adele was honoured with the Brit Award for Rising Star as well as the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
Adele released her second studio album, 21, in 2011. It became the world's best-selling album of the 21st century, with sales of over 31 million copies. It was certified 18x platinum in the UK (the highest by a solo artist of all time) and Diamond in the US. According to Billboard, 21 is the top-performing album in the US chart history, topping the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks (the longest for a female artist ever). She was the first female artist in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 to have three simultaneous top-ten singles as a lead artist, with "Rolling in the Deep", "Someone Like You", and "Set Fire to the Rain", all of which also topped the chart. The album received a record-tying six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, and the Brit Award for British Album of the Year. The success of 21 earned Adele numerous mentions in the Guinness Book of Records. Rolling Stone magazine placed her album 21 in their listing of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2020).
In 2012, Adele released "Skyfall", a soundtrack single for the James Bond film of the same name, which won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Her third studio album, 25, was released in 2015 and became the year's best-selling album, also breaking first-week sales records in the UK and US, where it is the only album to sell over three million copies in a week. 25 was her second album to be certified Diamond in the US and earned her five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, and four Brit Awards, including British Album of the Year. The lead single, "Hello", became the first song in the US to sell over one million digital copies within a week of its release. Her fourth studio album 30, which contains the chart-topping single "Easy on Me", was released in 2021 and became the year's best-selling album worldwide including US and UK. 30 won the Brit Award for British Album of the Year, while "Easy on Me" won the Brit Award for Song of the Year and the Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance.
Adele is one of the best-selling music artists, with sales of over 100 million records worldwide. She was named as the best-selling artist of the 2010s decade in the US and worldwide as well as best-selling female artist of the 21st century in the UK. Her accolades include sixteen Grammy Awards, twelve Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2011, 2012, and 2016, Billboard named her Artist of the Year. At the 2012 and 2016 Ivor Novello Awards, Adele was named Songwriter of the Year by The Ivors Academy. Time magazine named her one of the most influential people in the world in 2012, 2016, and 2022. She was appointed a MBE at the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to music. Rolling Stone ranked her 22nd in their list of 200 Greatest Singers of all time (2023), whereas The Times named her the second best singer of the 21st century.
