Adele’s First E! Interview: E! News Rewind
This June, E! turns 30! To celebrate we’re looking back at the most monumental moments in pop culture.
Adele has made it clear that she won’t be releasing new music anytime soon, so what better to do in the meantime than reminisce on how she got her start?
In honor of E!’s 30th anniversary, we’re looking back at Adele’s very first sit-down interview with E! News, in which she reveals which social media network she owes her career to, how her first Saturday Night Live performance changed her life and much more.
The 2008 interview, which you can watch in the above clip, begins with the pop sensation recalling how she studied music in school and eventually learned how to record her own demos in the studio.
However, at the time, Adele “didn’t really want to be the one up front.”
“I mean, because I never thought it would happen,” she told E!
Luckily, Adele’s friends saw her potential. One in particular, Lyndon—who Adele described as being “Mr. MySpace U.K.”—went as far as uploading her demo on the social network just as it was taking off in 2004.
The “Hello” singer goes on to credit Lyndon (and in turn, MySpace) for launching her career.
“I was on it from, like, New Years Eve 2004 and it blew up because of Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys,” Adele explained. “My best friend Jack was in Lily’s top friends, Lily was huge, and then I got spotted like that. That was literally it.”
Before she knew it, Adele was playing gigs in Los Angeles and New York City.
“They were like, a really big deal for me—and everything I do is a big deal for me—but it was really kind of low-key and really underground,” the songstress told E! “[My career] was kind of slowly building like that, rather than coming off the back of one hit.”
OMG Celebrity Looks on E! Red Carpet Over 30 Years
Despite Adele describing her rise as “gradual,” she also acknowledged how quickly her life changed after she made her debut Saturday Night Live performance in 2008. There, she played “Cold Shoulder” and “Chasing Pavements,” the latter of which would go on to receive three nominations (and a win!) at the 51st Grammy Awards.
“Literally, after SNL, my flight was at 8 a.m. I got on the flight, [“Chasing Pavements”] was number 20 on Sunday,” Adele recalled. “Then I got off the flight in London and it was number three. And then I got home and it was number one.”
“It’s really quite ridiculous, though,” she added. Like, how it’s blown up.”
The song, Adele noted, was about an ex-boyfriend who cheated on her.
“I found out and I went to this club and I hit him and I got thrown out of the club. And I ran away on my own,” the 32-year-old explained. “I remember sitting there and [people] were like, ‘What are you doing?’ I was chasing, like, a road…I was chasing a pavement. Then I ran home and wrote the song.”
Watch Adele’s complete E! interview in the above video!
