Adele 'Obsessed' with Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard
By Matt Wake | mwake@al.com AL.com /storypackage /#article_inset Article
Backstage at the 2013 Grammys, powerhouse British singer Adele was in the dressing room next to Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard's. "We were both getting ready – I think I was putting on my Spanx – and we met," Adele recalls in a piece for U.K. publication The Guardian on her favorite musicians.
Adele's new album is out Nov. 20. The record is titled "25" because it was the singer's age when she began working on it. She is now 27. According to an interview with Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt, Adele's last LP, 2011's "21," has sold 31 million copies worldwide while new single "Hello" netted a record-setting 50 million YouTube views in its first 48 hours.
As part of Adele's fave musician picks for The Guardian, she singled out Alabama Shakes for their "attitude." A few of the other laurels she bestowed upon the Athens-based rock band:
- "As a band I love their vibe, the way they look and interact – all with their own little character going on," Adele writes. "But I'm obsessed with (lead singer) Brittany Howard. There's something about Brittany that puts fire in my soul. She reminds me of Etta James, Ann Peebles – she's so (expletive) full of soul, overflowing, dripping, that I almost can't handle it."
- "On their most recent album ('Sound & Color'), there's a song called 'Don't Wanna Fight.' Brittany comes in with a scream: 'YOOOOOOOOOOOW!' I'd love to experiment more with my own voice like that.
- "'Don't Wanna Fight' – when I first heard that in my car, I almost had to pull over... blew my mind."
- "She's exceptional, she blows my mind," Adele writes of Howard. "I almost want to start playing the electric guitar, just to be more like her."
In her Guardian piece, Adele also singled out rapper Macklemore (for "visuals"), London indie-rockers The Maccabees ("consistency") and the late folk singer Karen Dalton ("voice"). According to Entertainment Weekly senior writer Kyle Anderson in a print article from the magazine's Nov. 20 and 27 double-issue, industry expectations are for "25" first-weeks sales to be between 1.4 million to 2 million. Those are big numbers any year. But particularly following 2014, a year when country-gone-pop singer/songwriter Taylor Swift's "1989" was the only new album to sell a million-plus.