The big interview: Adele

Size 10 figure? No. Celebrity boyfriend? No. Outlandish outfits. Not a chance, she generally prefers black. Willingness to fall out of nightclubs and provide ample paparazzi opportunities? Again no.

It’s three years since Adele’s first single Chasing Pavements arrived in the UK charts, stayed there for 14 weeks and was swiftly followed by the platinum-selling début album, 19. In the interim she has successfully broken America, won two Grammys and sold 22 million albums, but aside from acquiring a set of glossy publicity photographs, she seems little changed from the singer who began her career entertaining her mother’s friends with Spice Girl impressions.

In fact, in an era where most stars are carefully groomed by a PR machine to carefully remove any trace of personality, Adele, whose demands usually only extend to unlimited cans of Diet Coke and the occasional cigarette break, appears refreshingly unaffected by fame.

Partly it’s because it was so unexpected. Adele secured a deal with XL Recordings on the basis of a three-song demo she posted on MySpace and when 19 was released she had just graduated from the BRIT School. Attending the Croydon performing arts academy with alumni including Amy Winehouse and Katie Melua is one of Adele’s few concessions to the pop factory blueprint, and she still half believes that she’ll wake up sometime soon to find her success has been one huge joke.

“When 19 came out, I honestly thought only my friends and family would buy it,” she says. “I was hoping to sell a thousand copies. Obviously the record company believed in me because they signed me, but even they didn’t think 19 would spread the way it did.

“Before the album came out, I’d spent three years as support act for people like Jack Penate and Jamie T. Right up until that point, me and the record company had been completely in control of what I’d been doing. We did things because they felt good and right. Then all of sudden the album took on a life that we had no control over. The fact it got taken out of our hands, made the success even stranger.”

Adjusting to the recognition while juggling the demands of being the industry’s next big thing is partly why her follow-up album took three years to complete. That and the fact that at the very point her career was taking off, Adele’s personal life began to fall apart.

It was early in 2009 just as the whirlwind which had surrounded 19 was beginning to subside and thoughts were turning to the follow-up that cracks in her relationship with her then boyfriend, rumoured to be the little-known musician Slinky Sunbeam, began to show.

Adele, who is about to embark on a UK tour, has never confirmed her ex’s identity, but has admitted it took her six months to come to terms with the break up. When she finally felt able to put pen to paper it was inevitable that much of the material for her latest album 21 was inspired by the heartache.

“He made me so passionate for things in life; myself, him, food, wine, music, culture, literature – and life in general. I’ve never met anyone like that. Hopefully all that would have happened without him, but he changed me and put me on the right path.

“Neither of us did anything wrong, we just fell out of love, but I was so offended when I realised he thought I’d never recover from us breaking up. I got dressed up, went out a lot, and writing an album was put to one side.

“I knew I just had to wait until I was ready to be honest with myself and had reached a point where I was properly able to articulate what I wanted to say. Otherwise it would have been 19 Volume 2. I needed that lightbulb to come on.”

While a classically-trained pianist and guitarist, it’s through songwriting that Adele finds true escape and for as long as she can remember it has been her way of coping with potentially awkward situations.

“I avoid confrontation at all costs. I can’t sit down in a room with someone and tell them what I think, but I can sing about them because then it almost becomes anonymous. It’s like very cheap therapy and it means I don’t have to pay a psychiatrist £1,000 a session.”

Determined to make an album which had a very different sound from her début, when Adele was ready to record 21 she sought the help of US producer Rick Rubin, who in the mid-1990s helped resurrect Johnny Cash’s career with the American Recordings series. British songwriter Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder, the American who penned Bleeding Love, the song which propelled fellow BRIT School pupil Leona Lewis on to the international stage, also came on board and the resulting album was very much a team effort.

“Before I even thought about recording I did a lot of hopping from one studio to the next trying to find somewhere which had good vibe. It’s a very personal album and I really concentrated on the songwriting. To think that people will spend their hard-earned money buying my music is still mind-blowing and I’m very conscious of making it the best I possibly can.

“I always like to hang out with people for a while before I work with them because if they’ve got no sense of humour – no matter how good they are – I can’t sit in a room with them for seven hours if they don’t get my jokes.”

The collaboration clearly paid off. While 21 came out in January, a notoriously quiet time for the music industry after the Christmas rush, it sold 208,000 copies in its first week and sparked renewed sales of 19. By February, both albums were in the top five and with Rolling in the Deep and Someone Like You in the singles charts Adele became the first living artists to achieve the double since the Beatles in 1964.

Adele says she still feels like she’s “blagged” most of her career so far, but the last few months have been confirmation that she didn’t simply strike lucky that first time around.

“I’ve got a lot more self-worth on this album. Not that I didn’t have any before, but I was so expectant when I was 18 or 19. I honestly thought I’d die if something went wrong. The years between now and then have been epic, so much has happened and I’ve changed, but for the better. I’m more patient now. I’m more aware of my own flaws and I embrace them, I don’t try to fix them. That comes with age, so even if life is making you feel suffocated, it’s not the end.”

In fact this seems very much like the beginning. When Adele first made it into the charts she was grouped together with the likes of Duffy and Joss Stone, but her latest work is a departure from that purely soulful sound.

The album, partly inspired by listening to country music on a previous tour of the American South, has been described as Adele’s coming of age. With 21 also going straight to the top of America’s Billboard charts, it has cemented her popularity in the States where, following understated performances on the Late Show with David Letterman, the Wall Street Journal was prompted to describe her as the “anti Lady Gaga”.

She’s just returned from another tour of the US, photographed arriving at Heathrow looking much like the rest of us would after a long-haul flight – bleary-eyed and in need of a hot bath. Not that she minds. Her appearance has always been a talking point and after her initial success there were rumours she would be under pressure to slim down.

“I like to look like a drag queen. My mum has those eyelash extensions and she wakes up in the morning looking like she’s hungover because they are all bent. I can’t just roll out of bed and look amazing – I need a lot of prep.”

Adele may only be 22, but she’s seen a lot in the last four years and while she’s currently riding a music high, she knows nothing in the business is permanent. It’s perhaps why when asked who she admires, she opts for a singer who is still playing packed houses at 65.

“Bette Midler is the epitome of an entertainer. I think she is truly incredible. I’ve always been aware of her because you’re born being aware of her, but I lost my breath when she was on last year’s Royal Variety show. I thought she was incredible. She was funny and witty and talented and charming. She looks like one of those women who would command your attention even when she’s not trying to.”

A bit like Adele herself.

• Adele, Leeds O2 Academy, April 14.