Adele

Adele Adkins was born in 1988 and grew up in Tottenham, north London. She arrived fully formed in a way most singers never manage: a big, unhurried voice attached to songs about ordinary heartbreak, no gimmick, no reinvention every eighteen months. Her debut, 19, landed in 2008 and named itself after the age she was when she wrote it. The follow-up kept the system: 21, then 25, then 30, each album a number, each number a chapter of her life.

What sets her apart is restraint. She releases rarely. She tours less than she could. She has built one of the most commercially dominant careers in modern pop almost entirely on slow, sad, melodically plain songs that anyone can sing in the car, which everyone then does. The voice does the work; the production stays out of its way.

The breakthrough came with her second album, written after a relationship ended, and it turned a promising British singer into a global one. The lead single from that record swept the 2012 Grammys and became the best-selling US single of its year. Almost everything people now associate with Adele, the scale, the sincerity, the sheer reach, traces back to that one breakup and what she did with it.