Adele is the new Amy Winehouse. Adele has become Britain's new Amy Winehouse

She admitted that Amy Winehouse greatly influenced her musical career.

In a recent interview with i-D, she said it was Amy Winehouse's 2003 album Frank that inspired her to take up the guitar.

“If it weren’t for Amy and “Frank,” I 100% wouldn’t have picked up the guitar. I wouldn’t have written “Daydreamer” or “Hometown,” and so I wrote “Someone Like You” on guitar.”

"All the claims that Amy and I knew each other, were friends or something like that - none of it is true. I went to the London School of Performing Arts and Technology, and she studied there too. But a million percent that If I hadn't heard 'Frank', this wouldn't have happened. I loved it."

Asked if she had seen Asif Kapadia's recent documentary Amy, Adele said she "didn't plan to," but the positive reviews made her doubtful:

"I loved her and as a fan I was going through a lot of personal grief. I finally got to a place where I realized her impact on my life in every way. I really, really loved it. And when I read the reviews, it made me go and see."

"I was just shocked by the footage from the funeral. I didn't really look into things like saved voicemails or anything like that. I felt like I was invading someone else's life and it made me feel a little uncomfortable, and that ruined the whole impression. I liked looking at her, but it would be better if I didn’t see her. But, you know, I love Amy, I always have loved and will love."

Amy, a documentary film directed by Asif Kapadia, was released in July 2015. However, Mitch Winehouse, Amy's father, was critical of the film from the start, saying that the film failed to portray Amy's personality accurately or broadly enough. He stated that he is going to start working on his own project, which he told Bang Showbiz: "We hope to start very soon. And it will be more than just a film."

"All the people who weren't involved in the film, they're just pissed," he added. "They want their voices to be heard. We don't want to be like Asif, we'll let people say what they want to say, but we don't want negativity. We meet at least once a month: best friends Amy, Reg and me, and remembering all the good things. You might not know it, but a lot of people have hundreds of stories about Amy, and that's what we're going to do."

Let us remind you that this week (November 20) Adele’s third studio album “25” is being released on the XL Recordings label. The first single "Hello" was released on October 23, 2015 and immediately topped the charts in many countries, including the USA, UK and others.

A few years ago, critics recognized the young British singer Adele as the main successor to Amy Winehouse's legacy.

After Amy's sudden death, this opinion was finally established and became generally accepted. There really are grounds for such conclusions. Like her predecessor, Adele Adkins performs pop-soul music, has an impressive list of awards and even graduated from the same London School of Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, where Amy Winehouse also worked.

It is impossible not to notice significant differences between both divas. If Amy Winehouse sang about ambiguous, heavy and even forbidden things with a mischievous and ringing voice, then her colleague, on the contrary, is characterized by deep and low vocals. Starting the song with spare strokes, Adele, as the plot develops, begins to easily improvise and play with different timbres. Her voice opens up like a wondrous bud. A number of Adele’s songs are stylistically close to Zemfira’s impressionistic piano exercises from the time of the “Spasibo” album. It's nice to know that our singer released this record six months earlier than Adele debuted with her album.

Adele's first album "19", named after the debutante's age, was released at the end of January 2008. The disc immediately topped the national charts, and a month later it deservedly received platinum status, selling 500 thousand copies. At this stage, Adele is compared not only to Winehouse, but also to famous jazz artists Aretta Franklin, Etta Jones and Dusty Springfield. In the end, Adele was awarded Grammys for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

The wise Boris Grebenshchikov once sang that each of us must know our own “road 21”. Adele did it. The second album “21” (again hinting at the stages of the singer’s growing up) made a breakthrough worthy of the cult records of the Beatles, Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel. The record was at number one on the charts for eighteen weeks. For the first time since the Beatles, two albums and two singles from the same artist were simultaneously in the UK Top Five charts! Billboard magazine proudly announced that 21 became the 16th album by a female vocalist to spend nine or more weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and the first by a British artist since George Michael's Faith.

The songs from the album “21” marked a shift in Adele’s interests from imposing jazz towards spectacular dynamic country. Apparently, Adele intends to move forward in this direction. In any case, after a triumphant tour of the United States this summer, the singer enthusiastically admitted: “I feel like a child in a candy store, every day is amazing thanks to the variety of musical styles and lyrics that exist here, all of this really inspires me. Definitely, I will record my new record focusing on these works. I want to stay here and spend more time in Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee, to get to know and learn more about these styles.”

From time to time, critics try to accuse Adele of having problems with excess weight, but she herself rejects these accusations and retorts that she will lose weight only when she experiences discomfort in the intimate sphere because of it.

Perhaps she gained extra pounds after drinking excessively. After all, Adele loves to shut herself up in her mansion, drink a lot, keep a “drunk diary,” and then, on a hungover morning, give the scattered notes a song form. We can only hope that Adele’s safety margin is more impressive than that of unfortunate Amy...

Adele could become a superstar. She has been singing for 8 years, but became famous suddenly, literally after the death of Amy Winehouse. And this is not surprising! Soul in the spirit of Winehouse is almost the most commercially successful music of recent years. Adele graduated from the Brits School, which has also graduated many talented musicians, such as Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Kate Nash, Kati Melua, Katie B and Jessie J. Adele first appeared in public as a retro soul singer, who was compared to the prettier and more commercial singer Duffy., who in turn was praised even by Madonna. Adele not only sings but also plays several musical instruments (guitar, piano and bass guitar) and has already managed during her short career (only 4 years!) receive a Brit Award and two Grammy Awards, while Duffy stuck around, releasing a standard second album. Adele bravely continues to move forward— and at 23 she is the only one who is considered to continue the traditions of Etta James and Dusty Springfield. She released her debut album “19” in 2008, and a week after its release it topped the UK Album Charts, was certified platinum (that is, sold over 500 thousand copies) and was nominated for the 2008 Mercury Prize.

Adele became popular very suddenly. A demo tape of hers, recorded in her youth and later given to a friend who posted it there, appeared on MySpace. Exactly thanks to her success on MySpace, Adele received her first contract!!

In 2010, Adele was nominated for a Grammy (Best Female Pop Performance) for her single "Hometown Glory." And in September, her cover of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love" entered the British charts and rose to number 4.

In 2011, her second album “21” was released. Adele started singing with a country music twist, her album shows the mood early Dolly Parton, Wanda Jackson, Johnny Cash, The Carter Family and Alison Krauss. All this is very popular in the southern United States. The first single from the album, “Rolling in the Deep,” spent more than 7 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, which is rare for British artists. The album rose to the top of the charts not only in the UK (where it was in the lead for 6 weeks), but in Ireland, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium!! In March 2011, it reached number one on the Billboard 200. The second single, “Someone Like You,” also reached number one in Britain. Adele - with two singles and two albums, became the second in history after The Beatles (1964) to achieve such a result!! One can only wonder how she did it all, because her first album is filled with songs describing the collapse of her first great love ("He cheated on me, so he knew how it would end"), and her second album turned out to be even more emotionally intense (“Everything was made even worse by the fact that no one did anything wrong, we just didn’t succeed. It just makes you sadder and makes you feel like a complete failure.”)

Adele's life cannot be called problem-free: she is haunted by rumors and speculation about her excess weight (although she doesn’t consider him that way and says that she will start losing weight only if being overweight affects her sex life). In addition, she regularly and in large doses drinks alcohol, in her own words, to “quench boredom.” At the same time (unlike Amy Winehouse, with whom she is often compared), Adele does not use drugs.

Welcome to our annual rock seedings. Our transmission, like a winter cactus, blooms once a year, but at the same time remains a perennial crop, thirty-and-a-half years, to be precise. In these allocated two hours, in the best pagan traditions, we will celebrate the rock and roll harvest of the past year.

Let's start with January, when the band's album raised its colorful head above all winter crops Radiohead"In Rainbows". He was born long and hard. The first trips to the studio began back in February 2005, from August studio sessions became regular, like a factory shift at the Nizhny Novgorod automobile plant, and the results were about the same. The gang shared the painful process of creation with their fans on the Dead Air Space blog, from there we know that their old producer Nigel Godrich was to blame, who allegedly did not stimulate. The new producer, Mark Stent, also left no stone unturned, and Radioheads decided to give up on touring. The recipe turned out to be successful - there was no need to squeeze out creativity, and again become carefree and irresponsible like teenagers. Any psychologist will tell you that the origins of creativity lie in returning to childhood, but not all adults succeed in this. During the trip, we tested new songs and in October 2006, that is, a year and a half later, we went to the city of Marlborough, in Wiltshire, to record in a semi-abandoned manorial estate. It’s clear that everything didn’t work out right away, but the process began, so by April of the following 2007, vocalist Thom Yorke announced on his blog that the material was ready for the artistic council. It is clear that the author did not write in the style of an army combat leaflet; it was necessary to share motivation, dreams, nightmares. “The poems came out of fear without a name, you know stuck in a traffic jam, and you think - after all, I should have done something completely different... Or suddenly you will panic - I’ll fucking die someday! For example, I’ll go for a run and I’ll have a heart attack!” End of quote.

From the point of view of the group's managers, this fear has a very specific root. Radiohead's record deal with EMI ended after the release of their sixth album, Hail To the Thief, back in 2003. Yorke himself hinted at this in his blog: “We would like to return to the good old firm, to the gentlemen who actually make weapons, and treat music as a side hustle and are not too concerned about what the shareholders say.” In other words, the question arose - how to convey music to the buyer. They made a revolutionary decision - first to sell only via the Internet, without a fixed price, who will give how much, they agreed with the English company PacketExchange in order to bypass public network servers and posted the songs on their website on October 10, 2007. Looking ahead, I will say that the experiment, in general, worked out. There were, of course, those who paid zero rubles and zero kopecks, but the average price after three months of downloading was £4 per album. Since the website was not registered to participate in the hit parade, and for other reasons, a CD was soon released under license from different record companies, depending on the country and part of the world. There is, of course, a lot of work, so Thom Yorke’s nostalgia for the “gentlemen who make weapons” is understandable. And the gentlemen, I suppose, sighing with relief, began to cast completely different musical bullets.

Radiohead

At the top of the album list at the end of January was Amy MacDonald with the disc "This is The Life". Well, the artist’s last name is painfully familiar: we read it from the red signs of the famous cutlet shop, which brought the American way of life to all corners of the planet. I would like to inform you that all McDonald's in the world have the same surname, and the surname itself is Scottish. In this case, from Glasgow. Amy’s biography is short, like Pinocchio’s, so even its minor details are important to us today. For example, on her 12th birthday, her grandmother gave her £10, but instead of spending the money on ice cream, Amy bought a Travis CD, an album by The Man Who. Amy's father once intended to play the guitar, nothing came of these intentions, but he managed to acquire instruments, and the daughter began to strum on these father's guitars, and figured out everything on her own, choosing by ear. After finishing school, I went to university, studying sociology and geography. And here I should say a few words about Glasgow. The city is rowdy, but friendly, not too big, but not too small. They give young people a way, for example, in popular cafes they regularly hold “open microphone” evenings, and there they spotted our Amy, offered her a hand of friendship, and took her along. After six months of working with London producers, she received a publishing deal for her songs with Warner Chappell and a record deal with Vertigo, which manages Razorlight and The Killers. And finally, a person’s hearing, musicality, imagination is his inner life, or, in short, his insides. Amy has it all, but she also has looks, which is very important for pop music.

Amy Macdonald

Remember the pioneer "be prepared! - always ready!" This slogan, like almost everything else, was borrowed from the Boy Scouts movement. It was founded by Lieutenant General Baden-Powell, an army intelligence officer, or scout in English, who had been collecting techniques for living in the wild for many years. In 1907, his famous book Scouting For Boys was published, in which boys were taught to make a fire in the rain, pitch a tent, tie knots and be strong friends, because, as we now know, not everyone can go on reconnaissance. A hundred years later, scouting organizations still exist, but in our depraved age the title of Baden-Powell's classic book can be understood to the extent of a new depravity - with a hint of blues with minors. Name of a London indie band Scouting for Girls clearly borrows from a popular historical source, but is more innocent in nature. The group was formed in 2005, in February 2007 signed a contract with Epi, part of Sony BMG, and this corporate power did not allow the guys to die in obscurity. Their first album sold 700 thousand copies and received double platinum status, rose to the top of the charts and stayed there for two weeks in late January - early February.

Scouting for Girls

A girl pushed the scouts out of the honorable first place Adele, Full name is Adele Lowry Blue Adkins. She was born on May 5, 1988 in north London, in Tottenham and, therefore, at the time of our story about her, had not yet reached full adulthood. Adele is a good example of how new technology and the record industry take care of new talents, albeit not disinterestedly, since they feed on these talents, but at the same time everyone benefits - the artist, the people, and the listener. While still at school, Adele began performing at amateur evenings, and naturally thought about her image. I once went to a record store to look at the covers, get some ideas, came across Ella Fitzgerald's CD and bought it - well, I liked the hairstyle. The record was lying around unopened, then Adele did some spring cleaning, found it and decided to listen to it. As she now says, Ella greatly influenced her, although, to be honest, I didn’t catch the influence of the great Fitzgerald in Adele’s singing. You can hear Norah Jones or Amy Winehouse there. With the latter, everything is clear the girls studied in the same institution. In 1991, the School of Performing Arts and Technology opened in Croydon, south London, as part of the city's technical and specialist colleges programme. She had her own studios, concert hall, ballet classes, and so on. The Record Industry Foundation is a sponsor. Of course, there’s no need to wander through spit-stained clubs, come once a year, select the best graduates - and go ahead. Amy Winehouse, Katie Melua, Leona Lewis, Kate Nash and other now famous people studied at Croydon School. Adele may have been noticed there, but she wasn’t immediately invited to stardom. I think it was not for nothing that she went to record stores to improve her image. From afar, at 20, she looks 40, and only when you get closer do you realize that she is young and fresh-faced. There is a bit of a weight problem, but it is so common among English girls these days that it has almost become the norm. There is an anecdote: they compiled a list of foods that are useful to humans and in it sausages were ranked lower than cigarettes. In other words, it is better to smoke than to eat sausages for breakfast. A man full of sausages vaguely understands that something is wrong, and if he composes and sings, then his songs come out with emotional anguish. The heartbreak blues are born.

Adele's album is called Adele 19, and it was at the top of the list in February. The singer was nominated for a Grammy Award in four categories, they will be awarded on February 8, 2009, then we will find out.

Adele Chasing Pavements Adele 19

At the end of February, the album was in first place Jack Johnson Sleep Through the Static - “Sleeping under static noise.” Jack Johnson is not the most suitable name for an artist, like Ivan Petrov, there are many of them. The list of historically famous Jack Johnsons includes a famous boxer, hockey player, cowboy bandit, blues musician, actor, and tennis player. Our Johnson bears his last name with pride; his father Jeff Johnson is a famous athlete and surfing champion. Dad raised his son this way, from the age of five he took him to the ocean beach on Oahu, Hawaiian Islands, taught him to catch the oncoming wave. By the age of 17, Jack was planning to go pro, but an accident occurred - he was hit by a wave on the rocks, he knocked out his two front teeth, ended up in the hospital, where he was given 150 stitches and left to recover for several weeks. He played the guitar from the age of 14 and in the hospital, from forced inactivity, he began to think about life, write poetry and compose songs. As he himself jokes, a strong blow to the head forced him to grow up early. After school, Jack entered the University of California film department, which he successfully completed. At the university he made various musical acquaintances, the result of which was his first record, Brushfire Fairytales - “Tales of a Forest Fire”. The latest album, Sleep Through the Static is the fifth, recorded in Los Angeles, in a studio that is entirely powered by solar panels on a large flat roof. The record set a record for downloading; in the first week, 139 thousand listeners bought it online. The title track, Sleep Through the Static, contains poetic allusions to the author's opposition to the Iraq War.

Jack Johnson

In March, the unsinkable Amy Winehouse. Life hits her with all its might, but she, like the proud “Varyag”, does not give up. And in March she won triumphantly. It’s no joke, she won five prestigious Grammy awards at once, and this at the age of 24! We urgently need to go to Los Angeles, to the red carpet, but they won’t let her in. They don't give me a visa because I'm found using drugs. The American government cares about the morals of the people and does not want foreign singers to have a bad influence on them. It is known from authoritative sources, however, that 112 million Americans aged 12 and older have tried drugs at least once in their lives, so it was clear that the arrival of a British girl, even if she smoked, would not collapse the morale of the country in a couple of days. At the last moment they realized this, but it was too late, Amy thanked the academy via video link from a London hotel. The record company was ready for such a turn of events; Amy's famous album, Back to Black, was released in a luxurious De Luxe version, and it came out on top.

Rehabilitation clinics, popularly called Rehab for short, are engaged in restoring the health of those who have become entangled in bad habits. On Amy Winehouse's record there is a good original song with the same name, which expresses the artist's attitude towards places of medical detention.

Amy Winehouse Rehab

In the second half of March, for two weeks in a row, the singer was in first place Duffy with the album Rockferry. The record sold 4 million copies worldwide, so we must talk about it with respect. The reason for his success, as I understand it, is that Duffy can sing without trying to be a celebrity, and behaves naturally, even modestly. Aimee Ann Duffy was born on June 23, 1984 in Wales and grew up there. She speaks Welsh as her native language, but she studied English much like you and I. This soon came in handy, as her parents separated and she, her mother and sisters, moved to the English county of Pembrokeshire. His mother soon got married, and his stepfather's name was Philip Smith. Philip left his former wife, and she, consumed by a thirst for revenge, collected three thousand pounds and ordered her ex. They found out about this (maybe the killer himself reported it), the murder did not take place, and the ex-wife was given three years for villainous intent. The police temporarily placed the children in an orphanage for safety. Daffy remembers this without pleasure. She started singing from early childhood, at the age of 6, and carried a notebook with her, where she carefully wrote down the words of songs. She took part in the school choir, but they asked her to have a very loud voice. At the age of 15, she decided to return to her homeland, ran away from her mother and stepfather to her father in the Welsh countryside, and sang with local groups. At the age of 18 she entered the University and became president of the student union. After the lecture about choosing a profession, she spoke frankly about herself and asked for advice. “Get on welfare, honey, and become a singer,” the specialist told her. Which is what she did. The path was long and winding, it eventually led to meeting guitarist Bernard Butler from the once popular indie band Suede. He loaded Duffy's iPod with a lot of the right soul music for her, and then helped with the material and recordings. On November 23, 2007, she signed a contract with A&M Records, known to us from the records of Police, Procol Harum, Susanne Vega, S Club and dozens of others. On March 3, 2008, the album Rockferry was released, you know the rest. What you may not know is the price of fame and glory. In September 2008, Duffy admitted that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and was seriously considering becoming a recluse. She is scared when people recognize her on the street, she is afraid that the image created in the media may affect her as a person. In addition, you have to deal with other artists, and they have their own image. She was at an awards show and met Johnny Rotten, the former Sex Pistol, backstage. As soon as she came up to greet her, Rotten grabbed her by the throat, pressed her against the wall and said, “You’re such a bitch,” or even something stronger. Well, you can understand Rotten, he needs to keep his mark, but what does it feel like for a girl, a girl?

Duffy

For three weeks in April the American R.E.M.(Rapid Eye Movements “Rapid Eye Movements”). It's no joke, for the eighth time in their long-term rock and roll career they achieved the coveted first place in the British list. Their album Accelerate is their 14th. It is clear that with such a volume of creativity, the creative gland becomes tired. I'll tell you a little secret - their previous film Around the Sun, it came out in 2004, was unsuccessful in a commercial sense. Let's say, if I suddenly recorded a record and it sold 240 thousand copies, I would be in seventh heaven, but the results for REM are a failure. The question was very serious. Vocalist and songwriter Michael Stipe said so bluntly: “If we make another bad record, it’s the end.” Of course, the threat of disbanding a group can hardly be useful for spurring creativity, but others believe that guitarists, these irresponsible and eccentric people, can only be reined in, by twisting their tails with turpentine. I don’t know what recipe worked here, only the record was a success, its circulation was quite decent and we can breathe a sigh of relief: REM will not disperse themselves.

R.E.M.

At the end of April, out of nowhere, a group soared to first place Kooks with the album Konk. The first word is familiar to subtle connoisseurs, but even they do not know the second. David Bowie has a famous 1971 album called Hunky Dory, which is slang for "everything's alright" and on this record there is a song called Kooks. I mention this circumstance as an illustration of the connection between different generations of rock, the continuity of ideas and the germination of the new from the old. Konk is the name of a recording studio owned by another hero of the past, Ray Davies, lead singer of the legendary English band The Kinks...

I think I need to stop here, because all these Cooks, Conks and Kinks may make the poor listeners' minds clouded. The group formed during their student years in the south coastal city of Brighton. They were first noticed by scouts from the department of new talents of the Virgin company, an employment agreement was concluded with them, the company even tried to register the name, but it turned out that a group with the same name already exists, albeit far away, in Sweden, and the Swedish law does not dictate to us, because how their country is neutral and completely separate from everyone else. Their first album, Inside In/Inside Out, was released in 2006 and reached number two in England. That is, for a new and unknown team this is very good. The secret lies in the personality of lead singer Luke Pritchard. Born into a musical family, his father performed with the 60s band Bob Pritchard and the Echoes. He died when Luke was three years old, unwittingly leaving his son a heap of musical instruments. At the age of 8, he mastered his first song, Yellow Submarine, and then began to compose his own. After school, he entered the already mentioned College of Performing Arts, where he met and for some time became close friends with Katie Melua, who later became a celebrity. Then he studied at the Brighton Institute of Contemporary Music, where in 2003 he created his own team, The Kooks. Luke Pritchard is a charming young man with a high sense of internal secretion and healthy indifference, like the young Lagutenko. His songs are elastic and bubbly. People love them.

With this, I want to say goodbye until tomorrow, we will continue summing up the past 2008.

The Kooks

A week ago, on July 23, soul singer Amy Jade Winehouse died in her apartment. She was 27 years old, by this time she had earned several Grammy statuettes and scandalous fame. The cause of Winehouse's death is still unclear: it could be either a drug overdose or heart failure due to abrupt abstinence from alcohol after several years of alcohol addiction. However, no matter what the results of the examination turn out to be, they will not bring back one of the most amazing voices on the planet. A week after the sad event, MAG found out how Amy remained in the memory of her friends, colleagues and loved ones.

Obituaries in the press

Jess Harwell onPitchfork : « Her talent made her a celebrity in her twenties - at a time when each of us is trying to survive, but does so without the careful supervision of newspapers and magazines. We live in an era where gaining fame for fame's sake has become a terrifying reality. Therefore, many will find it difficult to understand that such close attention to Amy was an obstacle to her music».

Laura Barton inGuardian : « Pop music made women into vibrant and desirable creatures, but Amy's work revealed something different. These were the songs of a woman who refused to fit in - not an eccentric oddball like Björk and Kate Bush, but a woman who led a truly wild life, following only her heart.».

Sasha Frere-Jones inNewYorker : "U Einhaus made American soul a viable music, although many artists had worked on it before her. A white British woman, she put her own spin on the music - so what? Her merit is that, after listening to “Back to Black,” a person went to the store to buy Aretha Franklin CDs».

Yuri Saprykin in Afisha : « It’s as if Amy wrote out an indulgence for the British for all their sins (just as Shnur once wrote it out for the Russians), it turned out that success can be achieved not only through patience, hard work and exemplary behavior, that talent and cosmic sloppiness are quite compatible».

Igor Grigoriev onOpenSpace : « Winehouse was an incredibly gifted musician and a true Diva down to the last strand of her sixties challah, and Divas, by definition, cannot and should not change anything. In this sense, Amy rather repeated the path of Marilyn Monroe, who was uncomfortable among the crowd of people who turned out to be direct accomplices of her life, after she became famous and desirable».

INCelebrity statements about Amy Winehouse's death

Songs in memory of Amy

M.I.A. "27"
As Maya herself admits, this song was written last year, but now it comes in especially handy. “I dedicate it to all my friends who died at the age of 27,” the singer said.

U2 “Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out of”»

During a concert in Minneapolis, Bono dedicated this song to Winehouse's memory. Interestingly, it was originally written for the late INXS vocalist Michael Hutchence.

Amy Winehouse “Tears Dry On Their Own (Organized Noize Dungeon Family Remix)”

OutKast member Big Boy posted this remix on his Soundcloud account, which had not previously appeared on any of his albums or compilations.