ADELE
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on 5 May, 1988 in London
and she is a British singer and songwriter. She graduated from the BRIT school
in 2006 and after this, she recorded a demo consisting of three songs which she
sent to her friend who posted it on Myspace. This resulted in a recording
contract from XL Recordings. From this, her first single and also her
breakthrough song, ‘Hometown Glory’ was released in October 2007. Her first
album ‘19’ was released on 28 January, 2008 which was a huge commercial
success; during its release, it debuted at number one on the UK charts and it
is currently estimated that the worldwide sales for this album are around 10
million copies. Her world tour ‘An Evening with Adele’ for this album started
in May, 2008 and ended in June, 2009 however, she cancelled the 2008 US tour
dates in order to spend time with her boyfriend which she strongly regretted,
in the June 2009 Nylon magazine she said “I can’t believe I did that. It seems
so ungrateful”. Of course, this was a huge obstacle for her attempted break
though into America but she suddenly gained a lot more recognition when she
appeared as a guest on NBC’s Saturday Night Live which received 17 million
viewers: the shows best ratings in 14 years. At the Grammy’s in February 2009,
Adele won two awards: Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for
her song ‘Chasing Pavements’.
‘21’ was Adele’s second album which was released in the UK
on 24 January 2011. ‘Rolling in the Deep’ and ‘Someone like You’ were the most
popular songs in the album and they were in the top 5 of the UK singles chart.
‘21’ was again a huge commercial success: it topped the charts in more than 30
countries, was the best-selling album of the 21st Century in the UK,
it spent 23 weeks at the top of the UK Albums Chart which is the longest time
for a female solo artist and it had sold 30 million copies worldwide by July
2014. At the 2012 Grammy’s, she was nominated in 6 categories to which she won
in all of them and she won the BRIT Award for Best British Female Solo Artist
and British Album of the year. In 2012, Adele performed ‘Skyfall’ for the James
Bond theme song. This was a big hit: it has sold over two million copies
worldwide and for it, Adele won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song
and also the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
On the 20 November, 2015, Adele released her most recent
album ‘25’ but the lead single of the album ‘Hello’ was released on 23 October
2015. This single alone gained huge international commercial success: it
reached number one in almost every country it charted in and it broke many
records such as being the first song to sell over one million digital copies in
a week. It also broke the Vevo record when it achieved over 27.7 million views
within only 24 hours, which was previously held by ‘Bad Blood’ by Taylor Swift
which had 20.1 million views in 24 hours. Adele is very popular on social
media, with 25.3 million twitter followers which ranks her at 32 on the 100
most followed people on twitter. The top three most followed people on twitter
are Katy Perry (over 83 million), Justin Bieber (over 75 million) and Taylor
Swift (over 71 million) which goes to show that it is dominated by the music
industry. Adele has 64,338,106 likes on her Facebook page and 10,654,589
subscribers on her VEVO YouTube page.
JESSIE J
Jessie J was born on 27 March, 1988 in London and she is an
English singer and songwriter. She studied at the BRIT school and was in the
same year as Adele. When she graduated, she was signed by Gut Records but they
went bankrupt before she released anything. However, she then got herself a
song writing deal and contract with Sony/ATV Music Publishing in which she was
able to write for artists such as Chris Brown and Miley Cyrus.
In 2005,
Jessie J starting recording her debut studio album ‘Who You Are’ and she completed
it on 19 January 2011. Late into 2010, she released her first single ‘Do It
Like a Dude’ which was a success as it reached number two on the UK Singles
Chart as well as winning Best Song at the MOBO Awards. ‘Price Tag’ was her
follow up single and it reached number one on the UK Singles Chart. ‘Who You
Are’ was successful when released: it sold 105,000 copies in its first week,
debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart and sales have now reached over
2.5 million worldwide. Furthermore, this was the first album in history by a
British female artist to produce six or more top ten hits in the UK. At the
Brit Awards in 2012, Jessie J’s ‘Price Tag’ was nominated for Best British
Single and she was also nominated for Best British Female Artist. In 2012 and
2013, Jessie J was a coach on ‘The Voice UK’ which is a singing competition
programme on BBC One.
In 2013,
Jessie J released her second album ‘Alive’, it reached number three on the UK
Albums Chart, selling 39,270 copies and now it has sold over 180,000 copies in
the UK. Then in October 2014, she released her third album ‘Sweet Talker’ which
reached number five in the charts. It was led by ‘Bang Bang’ which Jessie J
sang with Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande. This single was a big commercial success
as it reached number one in the UK. In 2015, her single ‘Flashlight’ was made
for Pitch Perfect 2 and it was nominated for Best British Video in the Brit
Awards, 2016. Jessie J is popular on social media, she is well known for
charity events such as the 2013 Red Nose Day in which she shaved her hair off.
She has 8.46 million followers on twitter, 19,372,663 likes on Facebook, 4.9
million followers on Instagram and 4,528,743 subscribers on her YouTube Vevo
page.
