Adele Addresses How White Privilege Helped Her Career

image via Instagram, @adele

Adele is opening up about her experience of fame, and how it might have been different if she wasn’t a white woman.

The Chasing Pavements singer chatted to Hollywood Reporter, giving advice to younger women about how to succeed.

“More than anything, it’s just being yourself,” she told the publication.

“That’s one of the reasons I’ve been so lucky with my career — on top of the obvious of me being a white woman in music.”

 

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Adele went on to explain that she’s been able to retain a lot of control over her sound and image over the years.

“I think people are quite scared of me, and they’ve been like that since I was 18,” she joked.

She continued, “I think there’s no room for negotiations when it comes to what I want to do and how I want to do it. And it’s always been like that.”

This isn’t the first time Adele has spoken about feeling like she’s had more advantages as a white woman.

 

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In 2017, Adele dedicated her Grammy award for Best Album to Beyoncé, saying that the latter should have won instead.

Speaking about Beyonce’s album Lemonade, Adele addressed her in the crowd: “The way you make my black friends feel is empowering, and you make them stand up for themselves.”

In a later interview with Vogue, Adele backed up what she had said.

“For my friends who are women of colour, [Lemonade] was such a huge acknowledgment for them, of the sort of undermined grief that they go through.”

 

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Adele has long spoken of the black women who influenced her own career too.

While chatting to Rolling Stone in 2011, Adele cited the women who shaped her love of music; like Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige and Etta James.

Speaking of Etta in particular, Adele said, “She was the first time a voice made me stop what I was doing and sit down and listen.

“It took over my mind and body”.

Alexa, play Etta James!

• adele