Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Adele’s problem is she has no problems
Singer is sitting pretty at grand old age of 25
LONDON: Adele is back and trying to explain where she has been. Where she has been in her head, that is, not where she has been on holiday or why she took so long in Waitrose when she nipped out to get some milk.
Where the singer has been in person is happily at home in London, having a baby with her partner Simon Konecki.
She has been rolling in the deep financial security that two global hit albums can bring, feathering her nest with love and happiness. She has not been on television, in cheesy spreads in Hello! magazine or generally touting herself about like a glitter show pony.
Good for her on that score, but where has she been men- tally? Well, your guess is as good as mine.
“I’m sorry it took so long, but you know, life happened,” she said this week about the much- anticipated release of her third album, which is called 25. This follows on from 19 and 21, the song collections named after the age she was when they were composed and recorded.
I love Adele, but the way she is going on, you’d think she had been imprisoned on Robben Island for three decades, not taking a bit of maternity leave and a well-earned career break. Isn’t this just what new mums do – or used to do?
Her response and elaborate justifications have that tinny ring of guilt about them, which is a sadness in itself.
In a weird statement posted on her Facebook page, Adele rattles on and on about the issues that affect her. She is wishing she hadn’t wished so much time away wishing about stuff. Wishing she had got to know her great-grandmother better, wishing her waist was 5cm smaller, wishing she hadn’t cut her hair, wishing she could remember to forget – or is that forget to remember? – all these wishes.
“Turning 25 was a turning point for me. Slap bang in the middle of my 20s. Teetering on the edge of being an old adolescent and a fully fledged adult,” she said.
Adele, take it from me, being 25 is a cause for celebration and jubilation. It is not an angst-fest or an excuse for soul-searching and sorrowing. Stop trying to pretend that it is.
And if this is how you feel now, how are you going to cope with being 40? Or even – shudder – 50?
Just you wait until you are 65, when your hearing is starting to fade, your voice isn’t what it was and your knees look like soup plates. You will have something to moan about then, believe me.
After making a fortune from singing about her lovelorn years, Adele is now on the sunlit uplands of her life. And for her not having a problem is a problem. She hasn’t got any worries, so she has had to make them up.
Adele lives near me and sometimes I see her, out pushing her pram, anonymous under her bobbled hat, happy as a clam. I’d quite like to stop and say hello, tell her that I love the gravel heartbreak of her voice and the passionate songs so beautifully written with a teenager’s intensity. But no – far too stalkerish. And by the way, Adele, I’m a journalist, too. Freak, freak; squeak, squeak, as the pram goes around corner on two wheels.
But now I am more tempted than ever to have a little chat with my favourite singer. To say: Adele, relax and enjoy the good times while you can. Believe me, as with all our lives, terrible things are coming. There are shadows out there on the horizon, perhaps long in the future, just waiting to capsize you. Things that are far more terrible than some bloke from Croydon telling you that he doesn’t fancy you any more. – Daily Mail