Grammy Flashback Interview: Adele

With the 59th annual Grammy Awards set to air on CBS on Sunday, Feb. 12, we’re looking back at some of the nominated artists who’ve visited the Yahoo studio. Today, we look at the day we met a fresh-scrubbed, unknown teenager named Adele Adkins.

The story of Adele has been a series of non-stop superlatives that simply shows no signs of letting up.

The British singer’s latest album 25 — which has earned her five Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year, plus Song and Record of the Year for “Hello” — is certainly one of the biggest music stories of the past year. But the even bigger music story may be how, as Adele’s career unfolds, setting new records — whether via album sales, single sales, audio streaming, concert ticket demand — is now simply what she does.

That and make music.

But it wasn’t always like this. Turn back the clock to one mid-afternoon in March, 2008, and a fresh-faced, 19-year-old singer just in from England walked into the Yahoo Music studios in Santa Monica, with no fanfares or paparazzi accompanying her.

She was there to discuss her brand new debut album, 19 — then in stores only for a few weeks — and play a few songs.

“I never really made the decision I would be a singer,” she told us, sitting on a stool, the picture of warmth and good humor. “That it would be like, um, my job, and I wouldn’t have to support myself in other ways. Because it’s kind of difficult to have the passion to be something when you think it’s never going to happen.”

And these were early days for her. She sang two songs for us, only a guitarist accompanying her. One was “Melt My Heart to Stone,” and the other “Chasing Pavements,” her new single, which would become her first foray into the Billboard Hot 100 chart and eventually win her a Grammy in the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance category.

More hits would be forthcoming.

But there in Santa Monica, she was sharing it all: The early days of singing at school, the first few non-school gigs, which she called “quite daunting. My mum was always there.” And the major focus of her first gig in front of actual music industry brass? “I [had to] prove to record companies that I was singing on my demo.”

In 2008, there was already a sense of wonder in Adele’s tone that her career was taking off as swiftly as it had.

“It’s about my singing,” she said. “It’s not about… what I look like, what I say or what clothes I wear. I really want to be a singer, I’m not a trendsetter.”

You might say she closed the deal in a really big way.