Adele
I may be a little late to the game with this, but Adele is fantastic. I wasn’t aware of her music until long after she was at the top of the charts in the US, but once I came to know who she was, I realized her uniqueness, and for a very specific reason. Her body type does not fit in with the typical mold of an A-list celebrity. Her lyrics are notably juvenile, proletarian, or some other form of writing that is antithetical to what is generally thought of as “good”. Yet in spite of all this she is a major success. That’s the paradox of her. I would even go so far as to say she exemplifies what Adorno would call “high art” in that it was produced not for the economy or to make money or to be popular, but because she wrote down what was very important to her and created something new. Her music would most definitely be amazing whether or not she was successful in the Western capitalist music industry.
