Adele has it all with record-breaking success

SO this is what a phenomenon looks like. At a time of plummeting record sales Adele Adkins has shifted more than five million copies of her second album 21 and spent the past 10 weeks at the top of the British charts, breaking a 20-year record held by Madonna.

In this country, she is reputed to be moving an astonishing 8,000 LPs a week. Fuelled by word of mouth, this girl next door with the cloud-scraping voice is in the earliest flush of global superstardom.

Extraordinarily she has achieved all this with a collection of dark, at times vengeful soul dirges chronicling the death throes of her first serious relationship. Singing in a heart-splintered croon somewhere between Aretha Franklin and Dusty Springfield, Adele manages to be two things at once: a roiling tornado of emotion and a Little Miss Normal venting about the love rat who did her wrong. Perhaps it is this blend of the dramatic and the kitchen-sink that has resonated with audiences.

Whatever the reason, there’s no doubting the love in the air as she returns to Ireland after a hiatus of nearly three years.

In a sellout room, the Londoner is a performer of grace and charisma, her blushing between song demeanour in contrast to her music’s gale force intensity. Straddling both her LPs she performs break-out high Chasing Pavements recent smash Rolling Deep and a bone-bare cover of The Cure’s Love Song, belting out the lyrics as if trying to crack a hole in the Olympia’s cake-tin interior.

Adele, you sense, has been waiting for this moment all her life. A graduate of Croydon’s storied Brit school she was several years behind Amy Winehouse and Katie Melua and signed to chic XL Records the day she graduated. There’s a huge irony here of course: an artist lauded for her authenticity the product of the dream factory that has be churning out pop stars for years. But amongst so many swooning fans, who would dare point it out?