Fame is a precarious game, and how you choose to play it often determines just how famous you become. For some, it’s a task driven by exposure; a yearning to stand in the limelight at every possible opportunity, to be a ubiquitous presence on red carpets, television shows and in advertising campaigns.

This works for many — and the gigs are great if you can get them — but there’s another way of being a celebrity that thrives off the slivers of self that a person chooses to offer and the sacrifices they make. That’s how Adele Laurie Blue Adkins has done it.

Less really is more

Early last year, photos emerged of the artist stepping out of a taxi at Heathrow Airport in London, in a heated exchange on her mobile phone. A rare relic, and because of this they were quickly disseminated, dissected and meme’d to oblivion.

To see Adele in public is an isolated occurrence; to see such unconstrained emotion, rarer still. This weekend she celebrated the milestone 10th anniversary of her blockbuster album 21 being released with a discreet Instagram post, thanking fans for their support.

Staying out of the glare of the paparazzi has become Adele’s reliable approach to fame for the past few years; shielding herself from the public’s view when she’s not working on a new record.

Not letting overexposure lead to people becoming sick of you, while not becoming so distant that they forget about you, is a delicate task that involves knowing when to step out of the spotlight and return to relative normality — a move that benefits her both personally and professionally.

In the 21st century, an age shaped by social media and unfettered access to every star’s personal life, being missed by the public is a scarce thing.

As the music industry becomes populated by swathes of singers trying to make it, there’s an expectation that they all must stay visible and present to make the most of a strong moment, as if leaving your ‘spot’ means it’s likely that someone else will occupy it in your absence.

But when you’re as revered as Adele, said ‘spot’ is impossible for anyone else to fill, and so you’re afforded the freedom to take five and contemplate your next step.

Relatable celebrity

But this doesn’t mean Adele is a pop star shrouded in mystique in those in-between moments. In fact, it could be argued that she helped pioneer the 21st-century ‘relatable celebrity’ you see everywhere now.

At 19 years old, Adele was known for two things: her jaw-dropping voice and her distinctive, north London sense of humour that she refused to shake off as she grew more popular.

She was as befuddled by her fame and the notion of celebrity as you or I might be to find ourselves winning Oscars, Grammys, Brits, selling 120 million albums worldwide.

At one point, Adele was selling an album every seven seconds. Yet she would still be visibly shaking while performing onstage, effing and blinding on talk shows, signing off an uncharacteristically emotional Instagram post in May 2019 with a cheeky, “Bunch of fucking savages, 30 will be a drum’n’bass record to spite you.

Chin up, eh.” In a time when the impenetrable lure of the pop star was that they lived lives different to our own, more glamorous and unattainable, Adele reminded us that all famous figures had roots, and that there was no shame in respecting them.

In 2021, the ‘relatable’ celebrity is often constructed, used by managers and major labels to make musicians appear more in touch with their audience.

But since the days of 19, Adele has had it naturally, and the lure of celebrity — no matter how greatly it’s been imparted upon her — apparently hasn’t changed her life off stage.

The success of her now decade-old second record, 21, made her a stratospheric star with a gigantic fan base around the globe. She cultivated that not by being everywhere, but by being selective of where she was seen and in what context.

Talent Truimphs

Her records, teased so gently that we can never see them coming, have managed to swerve the leaks that spoil many of her peers’ well-thought-out campaigns. Clearly, even a leaked clip of her announcing that her next album would drop last September, recorded in secret at a friend’s wedding, doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily arrive as scheduled. That lack of preamble means the impact of her music is more immediate: when Adele returns with a record, it knocks pop culture to its knees. Because now we’ve come to know what to expect from this woman who manages to compel us so gently into supporting her music. The only way to tap into the narrative of Adele is to go directly to her. As we’ve learned, no outsider figure, no tabloid, has a monopoly on her creativity.

The paparazzi are an all-seeing force in the entertainment industry, but Adele has been spotted out in public only a handful of times in the past few years. In fact, most of the new photos we see of Adele come through her own Instagram page, which she updates sporadically. More recently, we’ve come to see new photos of her with friends or fans on the street instead. She’s a master at throwing us off the scent, but that doesn’t mean she’s holed up in her house: who could forget the gay bar she rocked up to in New York’s Greenwich Village with Jennifer Lawrence? Or the videos of her having the time of her life at The Spice Girls stadium shows? Tabloid photographers haven’t quite figured out how to track her down on their terms. She shows up, photographers flock there, but she’s gone by the time they arrive.

Which is a testament to how great she is at exercising restraint. While most musicians find themselves doing ‘the rounds’ — an abundance of press and performances to promote a new record — Adele can craft a best-selling album, appear on one magazine cover and return to family life for a while. She knows when to say no while others would keep going, rather than permitting the lure of money to become her priority. On her most recent international tour, she sold more than 2.4 million tickets to shows that collectively grossed more than $160 million (£124 million). She could, theoretically, do this every year, but she doesn’t enjoy it and so won’t force herself to. “Applause makes me feel a bit vulnerable,” she told the crowd at her Auckland show in 2017. “I don’t know if I will ever tour again [after this].”

Musicians become massive stars thanks to the decisions they make, and Adele’s are unique: selective, but with sledgehammer impact. If that leaked video is to be believed, rumour has it an Adele single might be just around the corner; a new era of music waiting to sweep us up and tear us apart emotionally. But we can only hypothesise in the absence of cold, hard facts. At times like these, only an elusive, mastermind pop star like Adele knows the things that we all crave to know, too.

Adele is set to release her fourth album this year.