The songs encapsulate the wrenching experience of having lost a great love — starting with anger and denial, and moving on through feelings of hurt and acceptance.
They are also probably the most lucrative expression of heartbreak ever recorded. Adele’s album, 21, has sold more than 17 million copies worldwide, netting her a £25 million fortune since its release last year. It remains No 1 in the U.S. charts after 22 weeks in the top slot, and has sold more than 4 million copies in the UK.
And, following the singer’s recent performances at the Grammys and the Brits, her record sales show no signs of slowing down — executives claim a copy of 21 is sold every two seconds.
But a tantalising mystery remains: just who was the man who broke Adele’s heart? She says she wrote the album over a three-month period at the start of 2010 after the relationship had ended. Yet while Adele, 23, has been happy to refer vaguely to the inspiration for the album, she has never actually named the person in question.
There are a few clues. She said last year: ‘We just fell out of love ... and I had to deal with the devastation of feeling like a failure because I couldn’t make things work.’
In another interview, she said: ‘He was a few years older than me. He made me feel alive ... and made me really passionate about food, wine, film, sociology, history and travelling. He opened my eyes to a lot of things.’
But was it really a great love? The affair must have happened between the release of her first album 19 in 2008, and the beginning of 2010 when she went into the studio to record 21 — both albums being named after her age at the time.
He was a few years older than me. He made me feel alive ... and made me really passionate about food, wine, film, sociology, history and travelling. He opened my eyes to a lot of things.
During that period, however, she has only been pictured with one possible suitor — a musician named Slinky Sunbeam — but she’s rubbished claims they dated. ‘Whoever this source is, they’re talking out of their ****. He ain’t my type,’ she wrote on her blog in 2008.
Given that Adele was fairly well-known by this point, had she been in a serious relationship, surely at least one photographer would have spotted the couple, say, going to the cinema?
And Adele has confused things further. In January 2008, she said she was single. A year later, she said she was still not with anyone and that she’d ‘had a relationship last summer that was rubbish, more of a fling’.
So was Someone Like You just an intense reworking of her feelings about a ‘rubbish’ fling from the summer of 2008? Or was there a Mr Right — who somehow went undetected — between early 2009 and early 2010?
Some Adele-watchers believe the truth may be that the album is her creation in more ways than one. One source who has spent several weeks attempting to find ‘the man’ told me this week: ‘My money is that she has either made it up or this was a case of unrequited love.’
There is also a cynical theory among some in showbiz that there’s nothing like a mystery for keeping people interested. Could it be Adele’s PR machine is deliberately stoking the flame — thus the constant denials whenever a new name is suggested?
For her part, Adele insists there was a real romance, with a real person. But who on Earth is it — and why can nobody find him?
There is also a cynical theory among some in showbiz that there’s nothing like a mystery for keeping people interested. Could it be Adele’s PR machine is deliberately stoking the flame — thus the constant denials whenever a new name is suggested?
For her part, Adele insists there was a real romance, with a real person. But who on Earth is it — and why can nobody find him?
THE ROCK SINGER
Who? Jamie Reynolds, the lanky, rakish lead singer of rock group Klaxons and friend of model Alexa Chung.
Why might it be him? Jamie, 30, has an eye for the ladies, and the pair did get to know each other in 2008 when both appeared on TV show Never Mind The Buzzcocks. He studied philosophy at the University of Greenwich and is several years her senior, so seems to fit her worldly description.
Why not: Despite them both being famous, they have never been pictured together, and his lifestyle — which has included 72-hour benders — seems worlds away from Adele’s preference for staying in to watch The X Factor with a cup of tea and a cigarette. At one point in 2008, he was also said to be simultaneously dating both Peaches and Pixie Geldof.
He says: ‘It wasn’t him,’ insists his publicist.
THE POP GURU
Who? 36-year-old DJ and uber-producer Mark Ronson, responsible for hits by Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse.
Why might it be him? He is older, well-educated and certainly the kind of man who could have taught her about sociology, wine and so on. They have been close friends for years — he was the first person to really champion her back in 2006 when she first appeared on the music scene, and they collaborated on a track on her first album.
Why not: How on Earth would he have found the time? He dated someone else for three years until January 2008, and soon after started seeing model Daisy Lowe. They split in September 2008, and Ronson then had a fling with a female drummer before dating actress Josephine de la Baume. They are now married.
He says: ‘No comment.’
