You guys seem to have an inflated sense of how much people in the States actually care about Adele.

There are many popular music artists in the USA. If one is "made" by the States, that is because the States tend to "make" people in general. It is the largest market for English-language stuff. Many UK, Canadian (Bieber???), Australia (back in the 80s!), etc artists, especially if they are performing in the "international language" of Rock, R&B, etc, will have proportionately more sales in USA...because it's a bigger market.

One of the few reasons non-USA artists might not achieve this in some cases is..... wait for it.... they sing in a "funny" accent. Adele does not sing in a "funny" accent; she sings in the accent which is customary to the genre of music. That accent is not native to all the people in USA. US performers also adopt that accent when singing in that genre. Nearly ever performer, for example, on the "American Idol" talent show, whatever creed or color or regional origin, sings in that Jello Pudding accent; they would be kicked out of the audition by Mr. Simon Cowell if they didn't. We've gone over all of this before.

But back to the inflated sense of how much people in the States actually care about Adele.

Ever stop to think that because you're in England, and because Adele is English, people there are proud of her and therefore your media bombards you with her stuff a lot? And they try to make you think Americans care about Adele because, well, USA still functions (God knows why) as this sort of "proof" of glamour and success?

In USA, we have no reason to care about her more than any of the other artists who "make" it here. Adele sings very well, but here you can find Black gals "on the street corner" singing like that. They have the advantage of being local and *seeming* more native to the music genre. They just don't have the marketing and star power. One of the paradoxes of Adele and her ilk is that their nationality gives them more leeway to perform "Black" American music as (often more privileged) White women. White women who try that in USA are often taken to task, either for "appropriating" or as "inauthentic." The attitude towards foreign women seems to be "well, they don't know any better."

Adele owes her success, in USA, like many such artists, to having a good amount of talent but more so to marketing and production. Adele could become the Big Fish in Little England, and then get picked up in the US as a star already; a similarly artist starting in the US would be ignored because there is way too much initial competition and too many people who won't give a chance to a fat White lady singing standard R&B. Some catchy songs were produced that she sang on and they were filtered into the pop music distribution machine, to be consumed by the large US market that eats anything that sounds reasonably appropriate to their taste. You're kidding yourself if you think the USA doesn't have singers like that, in that genre. But Adele was the one "served" at the time, a couple years back or whatever. Since then, other people have been on the menu.

Like I said, last time I heard "the Adele song" was about 6 months ago in the dentist office, and I have no idea when before that. I only remember this time because the dental assistant is pretty cute and I was thinking of asking her out, and she was trying to get to know me, too. "The Adele Song" was playing faintly as part of the Muzak and the assistant asked me if I like Adele. I thought, "uh, wait, what? Oh yeah, this mumbly-growly song that I kept hearing everywhere 1-2 years ago w/ its incessant 'Top Model' runway beat...uhh... I could do without it." But since I didn't want to totally blow my chance with the dentist chick, I said something like, "Uh, she's OK," followed up by telling her what sort of music I was realling interested in. That turned out to be a good move, because it turned out she was interested in some of the same. And I don't think, given her stated musical tastes, she was really interested in Adele at all; it was just there playing and it was something for small-talk.