"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

“Let My Love Open the Door”

Pete Townshend | 1980

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."

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