Rich List 2017 Young 50
6 £ 125 m £ 40 m ▲
ADELE
MusicI was sitting 10ft away from Adele the night her
life changed for ever. It was the Brit Awards 2011,
where she was due to perform her most recent
single, Someone Like You. Though her new
album, 21 — named after her age when she
began writing it — was enjoying unexpectedly
strong sales, the song she was about to sing had
barely scraped the top 40. Compared with the
night’s other performers — Rihanna, Take That
and Justin Bieber — she was a relative unknown.
The lights went down as Adele walked to the
end of the O 2 arena’s catwalk-style stage — and
towards where I was sitting — to prepare for the
biggest performance of her career. Eyes shut
and body visibly shaking under her black
dress, she proceeded to do the one thing she
does best: swear. You didn’t need to be a
trained lip-reader to make out the series
of anxious expletives silently erupting
from her mouth. Even today, Adele’s
stage-fright is legendary. Rumour has
it that one reason she took nearly fi ve
years to release 21’s follow-up was
because she could not bear
the idea of going back on
stage to promote it.
“G’wan Adele!” shouted
a man sitting at my table,
which was unusual given that
he worked for a rival record
company and the Brits are not famed
for their camaraderie. But everyone
who had come into contact withAdele had a soft spot for her. Not only was she
talented, an increasing rarity in the era of
autotuned vocals and talent-show karaoke
stars, she was also hilariously normal : a big-
hearted, foul-mouthed and slightly frumpy
ladette brought up by a single mother on a
Tottenham council estate in north London. The
young Adele dreamt of a behind-the-scenes
career in A&R — discovering music’s next big
sensation rather than becoming it herself.
Back in the O 2 , the night had been fi lled with
expensive stage shows involving pyrotechnics
and fl ashy dance routines. Adele’s set was just
her and a pianist. The spotlight came up and she
started singing: melancholy and bewitching;
the most powerful performance of the night.
She fi nished to a standing ovation and
what looked like tears — was it the emotion
of the song or the realisation of what she
had pulled off?
Within the hour, Amazon was reporting
surging sales. By the end of the week,
Someone Like You had knocked
Lady Gaga off the No 1 spot and
Adele had become the fi rst
artist since the Beatles in
1964 to have two places
in the top fi ve of both the
album and singles charts. It
was the fi rst of many record-
breaking milestones : 21 became
the biggest selling album of the 21st
century in Britain, with worldwidesales standing at 35m. In 2015 the video for her
single Hello became the most watched to date,
with 27.7m views in 24 hours. Her latest album,
25, is the fastest selling of all time.
Adele, who turned 29 on Friday, has followed
its success with a 122-show world tour, playing to
1.53m fans and taking about £138m at the box
offi ce. It is due to fi nish at Wembley stadium in
July; so far, her nerves are holding up.
The singer fi rst appeared on our Young Rich
List in 2011, worth just £6m, and this year’s fi gure
of £125m sees her joining the richest 1,000 for
the fi rst time. Despite her success, she has
repeatedly turned down opportunities to exploit
her image for fi nancial gain. “I don’t come from
money,” she told Vanity Fair. “It’s not that
important to me.” Her main company’s fi nancial
statements showed profi ts of almost £20m in
2015 and holds assets of £13m. There are also
dividends of £15m in three years since 2012. Her
enormous success of the past 18 months justifi es
a raise to £125m.
In February the Grammys honoured her with
fi ve gongs, bringing her total haul to 15. It was also
the night Adele confi rmed she had married her
long-term partner, Simon Konecki, by referring
to her “husband” in an acceptance speech.
Konecki is an Old Etonian who set up the charity
Drop4Drop, which campaigns for clean water in
developing countries. The couple have a son,
Angelo, 4, and own an 18th-century manor house
worth £4m in East Grinstead. 2016: £85m, 7(^) Krissi Murison
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The Sunday Times Magazine • 73