Grammys set stage for Adele
(CNN) — With nothing more than a piano, a little black dress and a micrdele ophone, Adele rouses crowds using her emotions and her voice.
It’s her modus operandi, and it’s likely how viewers will see the British songstress perform at the Grammy Awards on Sunday.
The awards show will be Adele’s first time taking the stage since she underwent laser microsurgery on a benign polyp on her vocal cords in November. That, in addition to the fact that she’s credited with the music industry’s 2011 uptick, means all eyes will certainly be on her.
Nominated for six Grammy Awards, including nods for album of the year and song of the year, Adele surprised fans when she tweeted about her impending performance.
Keith Caulfield, the associate director of charts at Billboard, said he expects the singer to captivate viewers on Sunday night, just as she did at the BRIT Awards in February 2011 and then again at the MTV Video Music Awards in August.
“On the off chance that she has a bum note, everyone has survived from a not great performance,” Caulfield said. “I don’t expect anything less than really good.”
And still, a simple performance will be enough, he added.
“You don’t see pyrotechnics and fog behind Adele,” Caulfield said. “She doesn’t need that. … There are no bells and whistles. It’s just her, great song writing, a beautiful voice and great charisma.”
Having already spent 18 weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 200, sold more than 6 million albums and spawned three chart-topping singles, Adele’s ballads have also become anthems anthems for scorned lovers everywhere.
“Every year, some album ends up at No. 1,” said David Bakula, Nielsen’s senior vice president of analytics for entertainment. “There’s always going to be something that rises to the top. But when it’s this unique and sales are this unprecedented, it’s special.”
Album sales rose in 2011, marking the music industry’s first uptick since Usher’s “Confessions” sold 8 million units in 2004. And Adele is partially to thank for the boom. Sales from her two albums — her 2008 debut, “19,” and “21,” her sophomore album, released early last year — accounted for 2% of all industry album sales in 2011.
“19” only sold 57,000 units in 2009, the year Adele won two Grammys for the album. But, more than three years after its release, the singer’s catalog title had its best week in December, selling 71,000 units, Bakula said. And so Adele finished out 2011 with two of the year’s best-selling albums.
“It does take a very special artist, and a very special song and album release, to move the type of quantities we’re talking about here,” Bakula said.
According to Neilsen SoundScan, “21” is the first album to sell more than 1 million digital copies in a year.
“People say, ‘How can there still be 100,000 people who don’t have this album?’ … It just shows the latent demand for great music out there,” Bakula said.
And there’s a good chance that after Adele performs at the Grammys, the numbers will continue to grow throughout 2012, he added.