Adele: Inside Her Private Life and Triumphant Return
She is assiduous in a warm-up routine to protect her throat, which was threatened by a 2011 vocal hemorrhage that led to canceled tour dates and throat surgery, followed by that dramatic return to the stage at the 2012 Grammys. In the wake of her operation, her already world-shaking voice became palpably bigger and purer-toned, and she’s added four notes to the top of her range. “It does make your voice, like, brand-new,” she says. “Which I actually didn’t like at first, because I used to have a bit of husk to my voice, and that wasn’t there at first.”
Adele is trying to build stamina for her possible return to the road, so she’s cutting back on sugar, though not carbs altogether (“I’d never deprive myself like that!”), and hitting the gym, “to get in shape for myself, but not to be a size zero or anything like that.” Her regimen? “I mainly moan,” she says. Small cackle. “I’m not, like, skipping to the fucking gym. I don’t enjoy it. I do like doing weights. I don’t like looking in the mirror. Blood vessels burst on my face really easily, so I’m so conscious when I’m lifting weights not to let them burst in my face. And if I don’t tour, you’ll catch me back down at the Chinese!”
So at age 27, Adele is healthy and settled down, with no vices and enormous responsibility: raising a child, nurturing a career on a global scale. In short, then, no fun at all? She nods, laughing: “I’m no fun at all.”
It’s all happened so fast. “I do have this, like, overwhelming yearning for myself,” she acknowledges. “Every single day I have it for, like, a split second. It doesn’t take over my life, but I have a yearning for myself from, like, 10 years ago when my only responsibility was writing songs for myself before anyone cared, and getting to school on time. And there was something so amazing in that. You know what? What annoys me the most is that you don’t realize how amazing it is to be a kid.”
Besides her family, Adele mostly hangs out with a handful of close friends who date back to her teen years or earlier — one writes children’s books, another is a TV producer. “As 21 got bigger and bigger, I started getting back with all my old friends,” she says, mentioning hopes of taking them on the road if she tours. “I needed them big time.”
So she has a squad? “I’ve heard about a squad,” she says with an amused snort. “I wish my squad was all supermodels. We are, in our brains. I guess I have my own squad.” She pronounces the word in a comical American accent. “It’s not as interesting as some of the other squads that are around right now.” She brightens. “But maybe Rihanna can be in my squad! That would be really cool. Oh, God. She’s life itself, isn’t she? I love her.”