From the Heart

  What matters is not your outer appearance –

the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear,

the cut of your clothes - but your inner disposition.

1 Peter 3:3

 It has been a long time since I have attended a tour performance by a current recording artist [except for the Tran Siberian Orchestra last December], but I have seen plenty of clips on Youtube and watched various live performances on TV.  The numerous costumes worn by the artist [for female, the “less is more” wardrobe style] and the stage presentation [lights, strobes, lasers, pyrotechnics, smoke, fog, moving platforms, dancers, backup singers, etc.] often overshadow the singer and the message of their song.  Performers strive for greater and flashier special effects – anything to catch the audience’s attention and sell more tickets.

And then there is Adele, a woman who approaches her art on her own terms.  When she performs, there are no revealing costumes, no dancers, and no eye-bending stage technology.  For her concert performance Live at Royal Albert Hall, Adele stood almost stock-still in front of a single microphone [dressed in a rather frumpy knee-length black dress that one might wear to church] flanked by her musicians, and sang so powerfully that you could have heard a pin drop in that massive, sold-out venue.  Singing self-written songs about her own life – joy, sorrow, pain, rejection, betrayal – she held the audience in the palm of her hand.

Last night at the Grammy Awards, she performed onstage for the first time since vocal cord surgery.  Standing again in the center of the stage in front of a single microphone, flanked only by her musicians and back-up singers, clad in a simple, unstylish black dress, she proved why she was the best selling artist of 2011 – the pathos of her song reflected in the faces of her adoring audience.  She did not try to sell herself – she didn’t need to.  She sang from the depths of her soul, and walked away from the Grammy’s with six awards and the status of superstar.  Somehow I don’t think that will change her way of doing things.  Her strength and power lies in unadorned singing from the heart – in musically sharing the human experience with everyone who hears her.