"Petrified" Adele Wins Over Bonnaroo Crowd

Early afternoons at Bonnaroo offer the best chances to catch up-and-coming acts and upstart British singer Adele delivered one of the day's higlights. Like Amy Winehouse, Adele Adkins is a neo-soul singer and a graduate of Winehouse's alma mater, the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology. But that's really where the comparisons end, as her songs veer more towards mellow acoustic tunes and bigger rock ballads. During her hour-long set, she showed off her huge, Aretha-style pipes. Most impressively, the twenty-year-old seemed totally unfazed by her performance, belting out songs like the solo acoustic number "Crazy For You" and a cover of Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love" as if she was chatting with her friends about doing the laundry. Still, Adele admitted to the smallish crowd that she was nervous about performing. "I'm petrified of festivals," she said. "I thought there would be only ten people here, so thank you for coming."

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Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

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