Adele switches up her honeyed vocals and continues proving her BeyHive membership in her just-released 73 Questions video for Vogue, released on Thursday (Oct. 21).
When asked about the most challenging record from her 2011 sophomore album 21, the British pop superstar named “Don’t You Remember.” “It was sort of my attempt at a country song. It starts super duper tender and soft, which I’m not really into that,” Adele admitted. “By the end, I’m wailing, which is way more my comfort zone.”
But wailing wasn’t an option for awhile after the singer underwent throat surgery in 2011 to stop her recurrent vocal cord hemorrhage. She said John Mayer, whom she described as “such a sweetheart,” offered her some wise words about the post-op process, “encouraging to stay silent,” Adele recalls, “and be patient.” The result was “a brand-new voice, so clean and pure.”
But that’s not what she sounded like when the 33-year-old artist belted out her 2015 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Hello” in a phone app that switched her dulcet vocals into an Alvin and the Chipmunks-esque performance before she tested out the “tunnel” and “drunk” effects.
Adele fans have delighted in hearing her honeyed voice on brand-new single “Easy On Me,” which broke Spotify’s record for most-streamed song in a single day and debuted at No. 68 on the Hot 100 this week (chart dated Oct. 23) only after its first five hours of availability. The lead single from her upcoming album 30, due Nov. 19, is poised to chart much higher on the Oct. 30-dated ranking following its first full week of tracking.
But when it comes to ranking her favorite Beyoncé albums, Adele fears “the ‘Hive might come and kill me” before naming I Am… Sasha Fierce as her top choice, Lemonade as her second (which lost to Adele’s 25 for album of the year at the 2017 Grammy Awards), and B’Day to round it out.
Watch her entire 73 Questions interview below.