DISGRACELAND - Adele: The Pop Star Repurposed by the Criminal Underworld

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

With the release of her smash sophomore album 21, Adele became one of the most beloved pop stars of the 21st century. Her songs were the most played at karaoke bars, weddings, and funerals – not to mention a criminal element in America which sought to use Adele’s newfound fame for their nefarious purposes. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Elvis. What happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that. A shocking public murder. This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics. I scream. Get down. Get down. Those are shots. A tragedy that's now forgotten.

End of mystery. That may or may not have been political. That may have been about sex. Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. your podcasts. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news? Huge news.

We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. How do we actually come up with a name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. We were talking about a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, Hey Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys.

Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. How much you wait, Wanda? Right now, I'm about 130. I'm at 183. We should race. No, I want to leave here with my original hip. On the podcast The Matchup with Alia, I pair prominent female athletes with unexpected guests.

On a recent episode, I sat down with undisputed boxing champ, Clarissa Shields, and comedian Wanda Sykes to talk about Wanda's new movie Undercard, The Art of Trash Talk, and what it really means to be ladylike. Open your free I-Heart Radio app. Search the Matchup with Alia and listen now. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of I Heart Women's Sports Network. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

The story about Adele is a story about fear. Fear of performing on stage, fear of losing your voice, fear of dying young like two of your idols. It's also a story about con artists and concealed weapons, about Michael Corleone and Tony Montana and Dog Day Afternoons and about how the kids, the criminal world has repeatedly tried to cash in on the universal appeal of Adele.

And this is because Adele makes great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called the Guns of Tottenham, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to grenade by Bruno Mars. And why would I play you that specific slice of unrequited love cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on January 24, 2011. And that was the day that Adele released her sophomore album 21. A record so impactful that it made her a new musical favorite of millions around the world.

Not least of all, the felons and con artists who appropriated her home. fame. On this episode, felons, con artists, corleones, dead idols, fear, and Adele. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Sydney Lumet's classic 1975 film Dog Day afternoon opens on a hot summer day in New York City. Construction workers talk shit while the sweat soaks through the backs of their T-shirts. Neighborhood kids splash in a public pool. Fruit vendors, derelicts, and day traders, all crowd the sidewalks while stray dogs root through the garbage in the street. But then, a car pulls up against the curb outside the first Brooklyn Savings Bank, and inside the car are three men. The driver gets out. He paces nervously on the pavement. Nearby, the bank's

one security guard takes down the American flag hanging outside the bank's door. It's closing time. The driver doubles back to the car. He leans into the passenger window, speaking to the man sitting there. And the man is sunny, played by Al Pacino. And though we can't hear what the two are talking about, we can see the very clear emotion which takes over Pacino's eyes. Fear.

Pacino's character is dreading what he's about to. do but there's no turning back now there are things he needs in this life and he has no other way of getting them or so he thinks he's desperate and he has to move fast before that security guard locks the front door behind him so he exits the car along with his accomplice sal played by john kazal and they walk inside the bank and Pacino carries a long white box with a bow and no one knows that inside that box is a rifle. He anxiously looks around. And these employees, these tellers, the security guard, the manager, they're all innocent.

Pacino's character means them no harm. And that's when the fear takes over. Watching this scene play out on her television in the comfort of her own home, Adele Laurie Blue-Adkins, otherwise known simply as Adele, felt her pulse quicken. It didn't matter that she'd seen this film one of her favorites more times than she could remember. Her response was always the same. Because Dog Day Afternoon or Al Pacino's performance in particular tapped into a universal fear that on some level is always present within all of us no matter the scenario.

It's the most primal of human emotions. In fact, do not be afraid is the most common phrase found in the Bible in one form or another. And though we've been told not to be afraid for centuries, we still are. You, me, Pacino and Dog Day Afternoon, and Adele. In 2011, Adele became a once-in-a-generation phenomenon with the release of her sophomore album, 21. It entered the Billboard album chart at number one, where it stayed for 24 weeks, breaking the record set by Prince's Purple Rain some 27 years prior. Now, while the album was at number one, three of its singles, rolling in the deep, set fire to the rain, and someone like you, simultaneously topped the Hot 100.

The first time that had happened since the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack way back in 1977. The album 21 has since become the longest charting album by any female artist, breaking the record held by Carol King's 1971 album Tapestry. To date, Adele's 21 has shipped 17 million copies. By far, the most of any album released this century. And at the time of 21's initial release, you could not escape Adele. Her songs were the most requested songs at karaoke bars. They were the most played at funerals. If you got scared to get onto a plane,

one survey showed that Adele's songs were voted the best to calm your nerves. And if you couldn't sleep, another survey showed that those same songs could cure insomnia. In Leeds, England, a seven-year-old girl miraculously woke from a week-long coma when rolling in the deep came on the radio. Adele's voice is there in life and in death, deep down in her subconscious, which makes sense because Beyonce once told her, when I listen to you, I feel like I'm listening to God. Adele has one hell of a voice, like three dusty Springfields all at once. A voice, which Amanda Petritsch writing in The New Yorker once called Perfectly Imperfect

and able to betray its host's frailty and by extension her humanity. But Adele's universal appeal is more than the sound of her voice. She is also incredibly relatable. And I'm not just talking about it in her songs of heartbreak, defiance, and impoverished. Adel has downright rejected the trappings of celebrity, as she put it in her own words. I don't want to be some skinny-mini with my tits out. And she said this with a speaking voice that is the exact opposite of her perfectly imperfect singing voice. Her thick cockney accent comically emphasizes some of her favorite words like fuck and

cunt, many of which she repeated over and over again in between songs while performing at Glastonbury. after being sternly warned by festival organizers to not do so. But this is who she is. Adele speaks like a character in a Guy Ritchie film. And Ritchie's characters, like Adele's beloved Al Pacino and Dog Day Afternoon, are singular characters in their own right. And they all share one common bond with the rest of us. Fear.

2007, London. 19-year-old Adele clenched her fist. into a ball and drew her arm back and clocked her boyfriend in the face with a stiff right hook. Everyone knocking back pints inside the pub, they were stunned, not least of which was the boyfriend, who was now reeling in pain and confusion. Adele, on the other hand, was not confused, nor was she concerned with keeping up appearances among a room full of buzzed 20-somethings. She was seething over a relationship which I quickly deteriorated into a living hell. She was catching unwonted attention from the pub's bouncers and now she was running. Her feet slammed rhythmically

on the sidewalk of Tottenham Court Road. She was sure the bouncers were hot on her trail. Any minute they'd catch up to her and hold her till the cops came. She assaulted a man in front of a crowd. Not that the guy wasn't an asshole and didn't have it coming because he was and he did. But there was no reality in which Adele didn't punch him. She'd grown up tough. raised by a single mother, first in Tottenham, a London neighborhood with a high rate of poverty, gang violence and crime, and then in Brixton, the place the Clash once told you about. And when they kick at your front door, how are you going to come? Adele was going to come with a fist to the face, and some weren't so lucky.

Like Avril Johnson, sister of reggae star Tipa Iri, who was murdered inside her Brixton home in front of her children, the same year that Adele and her mother moved to town. The gangs of Adele's childhood would give her the idea for the song title, Rolling in the Deep. To roll deep, to roll with a crew, with people who have your back and your time of need, was a necessity of London's criminal underworld. Tonight, however, Adele had no crew, just yourself, haul an ass down a London street in the dark, and she soon realized that no one was chasing her after all. and no bouncers from the pub, no soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.

She was the one doing the chasing, although she was chasing nothing, just the ground beneath her feet. The events of that night became the inspiration for chasing pavements, Adele's second single from her debut album, 19. Name for the age she was when she made it. The song was an unexpected success, leading to numerous Grammy nominations and a performance on Saturday Night Live.

Only years earlier, Adel had been a student at London's Brits School, the same performing arts high school attended by one of her many inspirations, Amy Winehouse. From there, it was a blur. Her songs went up on MySpace, multiple record labels emailed, a record deal with Xcel records soon followed, and suddenly Adele was doing what she dreamed about doing since she was a kid. But it didn't come easy. From the jump, Adele was afraid.

For one, she had terrible stage fright. Projectile vomiting prior to a show was not uncommon. In Amsterdam, she once tried to escape out of a fire exit just so she could avoid facing the crowd she was to perform in front of. And as she became more famous, however, the fear evolved. In 2011, the year of 21, the year she released what would become the biggest album of the 21st century, she was afraid of something much more profound.

She worried that the more famous she got, the more out of touch she would become. And thus, her life experiences would no longer be the life experiences of her audience. She feared she would no longer be relatable. And that wasn't all. Two things happened that year in quick succession. The first led to the fear that she would

never be able to sing again. But the second, that had her fearing for her own life. Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits, and must-have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists, like back in the day Pride. Come together, celebrate love.

Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone. Listen now. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you saw it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets.

And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secret secret. how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine.

He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts. Hi, I'm Chris Fairbanks. And I'm Karen Kilgariff.

We host Do You Need a Ride, the mobile comedy podcast that answers the question, what does it sound like when we drive our comedian friends around the wild streets of Los Angeles? Yes, every week, we pick up a hilarious guest, maybe run some errands, share some laughs, and our dreams. Like when Martha Kelly shared her career pivot. I want to become a influencer of divorced moms whose kids have gone off to college, who have decided they're going to start living life for the kids. themselves. Or the time Baron Vaughn got distracted by the majestic scenery. Then there's a freaking deer right there on the side of the road.

Holy shit. Eating freaking road grass. Road grass. I wish you said glass. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Do You Need a Ride on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. You're welcome. Al Pacino made it look easy. sitting there in his brown college boy jacket, getting comfortable in the black leather chair, beginning to understand the true nature of his character, Michael Corleone. He wasn't a loudmouth or a hothead like his brother Sonny, played by Jimmy Kahn.

And he wasn't as transparent as a Corleone's family attorney, Tom Hagan, played by Robert Duval. But as Kahn and Duval paced the dimly lit room, mahogany tables, hardwood floors, and arguing about what to do with this dirt, 30 cop, McCluskey, protector of the narcotics man who had put their pops in the hospital, Pacino was slowly, methodically turning. He was the dark horse, the silent type, the one you never saw coming.

Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone, was getting ready to push past his own fears, such as what would happen to him if he joined the family business? How would it change him? And what would he have to do? and there was only one way to find out. Only one way through. Fear was not an option. Fear was the mind killer.

From a couch across the room facing the television set, Adele leaned in. The pivotal scene from one of her favorite films The Godfather played out on the screen. Pacino was so good, so tough. He was her guy. In the way he was able to subtly show how his character conquered his fears,

was truly inspiring. These crime films that Adele loved, the crime films that were universally loved, they served more than one purpose. They were a source of comfort when Adele wanted to curl up and shout out the world and escape into great storytelling.

And that's something we can all relate to. But there was something else as well, these movies, especially when it came to scenes like this. In these films, these performances, could give you the strength and the tools to overpower fear before the world with its teeth and its insatiable appetite overpowered you. July 23rd, 2011, Andrew Morris, Amy Winehouse's bodyguard, checked in on his employer at around 10 in the morning.

He found her laying on her bed, unconscious, at her home in Camden, North London. She'd been up late the night before, drinking, and it wasn't unusual for Amy to be passed out till midday. So Morris let her sleep it off. Five hours later, however, at three in the afternoon, he decided to check in on her again. And there she was, still on the bed, still unconscious, still in the same exact position as before. This now struck Morris as awed. He ran to her side.

She wasn't breathing. She had no pulse. Morris picked up the phone and called for an ambulance. And shortly thereafter, Amy Winehouse would be declared dead. She was 27 years old. It would be months before an official inquest would find that Amy Winehouse died from misadventure caused by high alcohol consumption. But misadventure wasn't the only thing that killed Amy Winehouse. Adele, for one, was well aware of this fact.

news of Amy's death hit Adele particularly hard. She was sad and she was pissed and she was, as she put it, offended. Amy had gone to the Brits school just like Adele. She was the reason Adele began to play guitar in the first place. The reason why Adele found the courage to write and sing her own songs. And now, ironically, Amy was gone. In the exact same year that Adele was breaking records and dominating the charts with her

album 21. The reason that Adele was offended by Amy's death was because the public had done their part to do her in. Amy's drinking, her drug use, her erratic behavior, it all played out in slow motion in the pages of the press and in posts on social media, like a car wreck that everyone pumped the brakes to watch as they pass by. If the public hadn't been given such intimate and always on access to every single choice Amy Winehouse made, every mistake. If there wasn't this collective need to watch a celebrity struggle and to comment on it, to share it, to retweet it, well, it begged the question, would Amy still be alive? It was impossible for Adele not to imagine that she was next,

that fame and fate were nothing but a pattern in search of the next tragic figure to fit their mold. Paris. The massive world tour for 21 had just begun when Adele felt something in her throat pop. She ended the show that night more than a little concerned. She'd been singing for nearly a decade since she was 14 years old and had never experienced anything like this before.

She hopped a plane to London where the next day her doctor told her it was acute laryngitis and she needed rest. Two weeks later, she resumed. the tour, which eventually made its way to the United States. And then it happened again. Only this time, it wasn't laryngitis. This time, a blood vessel on her vocal cord burst.

She gave it another couple of weeks and let the hemorrhage heal and then went back at it. But it kept happening. Her voice, that incredible voice, it kept giving out. The media and the Internet took notice and sharpened their knives. She was a smoker. She was a drinker. She was a loud talker and even a loud cackler. We've seen this one before.

It's Amy 2.0. Just another wildly talented British singer running her God-given instrument ragged. Adele wasn't listening to what was being said about her online. Instead, she was listening to the advice of other singers who had gone through similar problems. Veterans like Roger Daltry, Stephen Tyler, and Elton John.

Even younger singers like John Mayer, all of whom had undergone cutting-edge throat surgery to salvage their voices and keep their jobs. And so, on November 3, 2011, coincidentally, the same week that 21 returned to the number one spot on the Billboard album chart, Adele canceled all performances and went under the knife at Mass General Hospital in Boston. Actually, it was a laser, not a knife, which the world-renowned throat surgeon, Stevens-Eythel, used to remove a poli, that had been plaguing Adele's vocal chord. And then, for months after, Adele's future was uncertain.

For five weeks, she was unable to talk. Five long weeks in which she wondered what her voice would sound like when it returned. What if she would never be able to sing like she used to? What if she couldn't sing at all? But every inkling of self-doubt melted away months later on February 12, 2012. when Adele made her long-awaited return to performing

at the 54th annual Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles. Not only did she take home seven awards that night, including album of the year, but she performed rolling in the deep, and she killed it. Her post-surgery voice was not only strong, it had actually gained some upper range. It was like the Adele everyone already knew, only better. But despite her rousing performance in all her true,

trophies. Adel was upstage that night by tragedy. The price of fame, which Amy Winehouse had so sorely paid the previous year, was now hanging over the Staples Center like a ghost. The Beverly Hilton Hotel, Suite 434. The portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando hanging on the walls surveyed the room in silence. Trays of uneaten food opened bottles of champagne. The remaining contents now warm and flat. In the bathroom, prescription bottles of Xanax and muscle relaxers on the counter. Next to them, a spoon for cocaine. And there in the bathtub, submerged under six inches of water, the body of 48-year-old Whitney Houston.

Whitney never made it to the Grammys that night. She didn't even make it to the pre-party thrown by her mentor, Arista Records founder, David Davis the day before the Grammys. It was on that day that a combination of cocaine, prescription drugs, and heart disease contributed to Whitney Houston's sudden death. The Grammy Awards became a more solemn affair. The bright victories were tinted with a touch of darkness, and Adele's incredible performance took on greater meaning. Rolling in the deep wasn't just a kiss-off to an X. It was a kiss-off to the most. old, the press, the public.

They weren't going to run her into the ground like they did Whitney or Amy. Soon, Adele would give birth to her son, who she had with her boyfriend at the time. An investment banker turned charity CEO named Simon Kinecke. And she had a family to protect. So she shifted into Pacino mode. Imagine, if you will, Adele, sitting in that black leather chair, in that dimly lit room, with its mahogany tables and hardwood floors. And just like Al Pacino, just like Michael Corleone,

Adele pushed through the fear. She locked down her private life. She locked herself in her house so that the paparazzi couldn't reach her. And she became her own unreliable narrator. She did this by feeding little lies to those in her inner circle on purpose in order to see who was talking to the press. It's a gangster move. And the gangster knows that if she tells one person a lie

and that lie ends up in the papers, then that gangster knows exactly who betrayed her. And so then Adele would unceremoniously cut them loose from her life. It wasn't easy watching someone you thought you trusted go off behind your back like that. But it made it a lot easier to let them go, knowing that by doing so, you added one more additional layer of protection,

more protection than Amy Winehouse or Whitney Houston had. But the more those layers of protection were applied, the harder it was to be in the outside world, the less relatable Adele feared she would become. And that was the fear, that was it. That fear remained after all these years as one of Adele's greatest fears that she would become unrelatable. The grandiose houses, the multiple,

awards, the money, the fame, Adele was a long way from the mean streets of Tottenham, and she knew it. The challenge now was to remain relatable with those streets with any street, anywhere in the world. And after four years of working on new music, after much anticipation from her fans,

after the smashing success of 21, Adele returned at last with a song that was so authentic and so relatable that it was downright criminal. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Five months, Toronto, Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate your existence.

IHeart Radio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival, and we won't stop. Celebrate Pride. Turn up the love and listen to IHeart Pride Canada, your 24-7 radio stream and the only playlist you need for your Toronto Pride celebrations. Pride is so great because it gets, a whole bunch of people, this visibility that they've never had before.

We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy Pride! Iheart Radio. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you saw it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air,

so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.

and he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every story has a point where it's balanced on a knife's edge. That's where we begin. For some, it's a confrontation no parent ever expects. They finally admit, we're here to take your children.

The department has taken custody and we're here to take your kids. It was just shock and horror and desperation. For others, it's surviving the unthinkable. As they're having this gun battle, thousands of feet up in the air, many of the bullets start to puncture the aircraft. I thought we were going to die then. The Knife is a podcast about real people whose lives were upended in an instant. We talk to the people who lived it, unpacking what happened, how they got through it, and what came next. And on our off-record episodes, we go even deeper into the reporting and answer the question,

you can't stop thinking about. New episodes drop every Thursday on the exactly right network and the IHeart Podcast Network. Listen to the Knife on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, this next line, it's just begging me to do a cheap Tony Montana

from Scarface impersonation, but I'm not going to do that, okay? Just picture Al Pacino as Tony Montana, and he's sitting there, and he gives you the line, you want to fuck with me? Okay, you cockroaches. And I'll picture Tony Montana high on cocaine

and sweating through his black suit. With trembling hands, he's hastily assembling his grenade launcher inside his office suite. His bugged-out eyes, they're alternating between the weapon's intricate design and a series of closed-circuit television sets. And they play out a disturbing scene these TVs.

It's armed men. They've invaded Tony's mansion, and they're coming up the blood red staircase, where they're now waiting on the other side of the door. And that door, that door is the only thing separating Tony Montana between life and here and death out there. And so he says, You want to play games?

Okay. Tony's now facing the door in a battle stance with his knees bent. The fear, it's inverted. He was fear now. Tony Montana, he's holding the grenade launcher in his very capable hands, slung down low at hip level, and he's ready to fire off at anyone who dares step inside his private residence. And with a roar, he shouts, you guys know the line.

Say hello to my little friend. Watching this all unfold on the television, Adele let Luce a laugh as explosive as one of Tony Montana's grenades as she watched Al Pacino as the Cuban drug lord in Brian DePama's film Scarface. It was 2015, and Adele was doing what she did every time she was overwhelmed in what she called a tsunami of emotions. She was binging her favorite crime films, something to soothe the anxiety surrounding the impending release

of her third studio album, 25. The process to follow up the smash hit 21 had been a labored one, beset with writer's block and crushing doubts. Though when Adele began to collaborate with producer Greg Kirsten, known at the time for his work with Sia, Kelly Clarkson, and Lily Allen, among others, the creative floodgates opened.

Writing the perfect Adele song, however, proved harder than it had been before. The music had to feel as authentic. authentic and direct as it had in the past. A full six months passed between when Adele and Kirsten wrote the verses for 25's lead single Hello and when they wrote its cathartic chorus. But their patience paid off, as did the patience of Adele's fans, because when the song Hello was released in October of 2015,

the world starved for new Adele material for years ate it up. And the single went to number one in 102 countries, setting an iTunes record. Its videos set a record on YouTube as well, where it amassed 50 million views in just 48 hours. Once again, audiences connected with Adele. And audiences could relate to Adele because she was offering a different side of herself, which in turn gave listeners the opportunity to recognize the same different side in themselves. Hello wasn't just another kiss-off to an ex or a rally cry to stay strong in the face of great adversity. It was a ballot about forgiveness and about moving on.

It was about closure and about growing up. It was the definition of a universal hit. And it hit everyone, everywhere, all at once. November 9, 2015, Yipslanti, Michigan, 6.40 p.m. The police squad car tore down Railroad Street, coming to a dramatic stop outside an apartment complex in the 900 block. Two officers emerged from the car, the pulsing blue lights illuminating their every movement as dust crept in. They led with their service weapons, creeping swiftly with purpose towards the apartment building's front door. Kidnapping in progress.

That was the call they'd received from dispatch. Something about someone being dragged against their will inside. The cops did their sweep. The coast was clear, and the door was unlocked. And they were inside. There, halfway up the stairs, two men. Arms twisted and bent like a mall pretzel. They wrestled, they struggled.

And then the cops saw it. The perp was pressing the muzzle of a handgun into the other guy's abdomen. And the cops were yelling now, drop it, on your knees. I said on your fucking knees. The perp froze, dropped the piece. And seconds later, he was in police custody. riding in the back of the squad car on his way to county jail. 21-year-old Brian Earl Taylor had multiple felony warrants

and was out on parole when he was arrested and charged with unlawful imprisonment and carrying a concealed weapon. Allegedly, he had been in the process of forcing the other man in the stairwell to take him to his apartment where he planned to rob him. At the time of the arrest, Adele's Hello was the number one song in the country. It was like air or water, gas station clerks, retail store workers, bank tellers, gym rats, dental hygienists. It didn't matter who you were or what you did. You heard that song and you heard it often.

Even the perps heard it. And we know this because four months later at his sentencing in March of 2012, when it came time to plead his case, Brian Earl Taylor didn't just ask for forgiveness for what he'd done. He sang it. Brian Earl Taylor sang a personalized version of Adele's hello to the judge on the day of his sentencing. And I got to think that the thought process here

was that he, the criminal, was hoping to find some common ground with the judge, with the law, and that common ground being Adele. The common ground of the biggest song in the world, the common ground of Adele's universal relatability. Relatable or not, Adele couldn't help with Brian Earl Taylor's plate that day.

He was sentenced up to 17 years in prison. It was then that Brian was driven to change. He worked in the prison system's palliative care program, helping other inmates who were sick or dying. He taught himself piano on the prison's keyboard and began to write his own songs. And in the fall of 2019, after serving a little over seven years of his sentence, Brian Earl Taylor was released on parole.

It was only then that he revealed to the press when he had heard hello for the first time and what inspired him to sing it to the judge. He was locked up, awaiting trial, sent to solitary after getting into it with another inmate. That's when he heard Adele's voice. He was alone and afraid when Hello wafted in from somewhere. And it was then that something clicked for Brian Earle-Taylor. He could feel the fear that had driven his young criminal life start to fade away, and in its place, something else was taking root.

Call it hope, call it wisdom, call it clarity. Whatever it was, Adele could relate. Justin Jackson walked out of prison and into the warm Florida sunshine. After two long years, he was a free man, but was he a changed man? and did he regret things he'd done? When it came to regret, there was the whole getting caught of it all, and you always regretted that,

because it was so balzy what he'd done, and he'd almost pulled it off, pretending to be a member of Madonna's entourage, sweet-talking of boutique in New York to lend him $2.4 million in jewelry for a photo shoot. Air quotes around lend and photo shoot. There was no photo shoot, and there was no photo shoot,

no lending, and there was no Madonna, not really. There was just Justin Jackson and over $2 million worth of Swiss luxury jewelry weighing heavy in his thieving hands. The Florida pawn shop may have paid pennies on the dollar for the stuff, but when you're talking millions of dollars, that's a lot of fucking pennies. So that question again, was he a changed man? Nah. He was merely a man with a strengthened resolve and the desire to get it right the next time. But a fresh scam needed a fresh celebrity and a fresh mark. This time, the mark wouldn't be high-end jewelry, would be high-end sneakers, sneakers with serious resale value, the sneakers of NBA players, and the celebrity through which he could work the scam had to be God-tier, someone who commanded

respect and awe from just about anyone. In 2017, as Justin Jackson put his new scam in place, That celebrity was Adele. Justin Jackson created an email address that appeared to belong to Adele's manager, Jonathan Dickens. He then began to email the representatives of NBA players, offering tickets to Adele's concerts in exchange for their sneakers, which he said would be donated to a charity auction. Of course, just like there had been no Madonna and no photo shoot, there was no Adele and there was no charity auction and there were no concert tickets. But not everyone that Justin Jackson contacted could easily sniff that out. Paul George, Victor Aladipo, and Richard Hamilton were among the pro ball players who actually sent their sneakers as requested.

This mild success made Jackson greedy. He wanted to attend the Rolling Loud Hip Hop Festival in Miami, where Kendrick Lamar was headlining. But he didn't want to pay for it. And why should he, when he could pretend to be Adele's manager and get tickets for free? When festival organizers received a suspicious email from someone claiming to be Adele's manager, the red flags immediately went up. They contacted Miami-Dade PD, who in turn contacted the fake Jonathan Dickens, Justin Jackson, posing as the festival's production manager.

A meetup was set in downtown Miami, and in May of 2017, days before the Rolling Loud Festival, Justin Jackson and his wife, Angel Lee, rolled into Bayfront Park, thinking they were really pulling it off, only to be immediately arrested and charged with over a dozen felonies, including grand theft, identity theft, and organizing a scheme to defraud. Adele's songs are one-of-a-kind currency. Her identity is another kind, and her manager's identity is yet another. My point is, even those in Adele's orbit have value on the black market, And Justin Jackson's brazen but ultimately dumb crime was the criminal world's proof of and co-sign on Adele's cultural value. Once Hello hit, Adele was no longer relatable.

She was exploitable. Thus, the counterfeit Adele was born. But scammers, moles in her inner circle, or felons who sang her songs in court, none of these had anything to do with her divorce from Simon Kinecke. The two had married shortly after the birth, of their son, but the end of that marriage came just a year or so later. There was nothing as dramatic as an Adele lyric that it led them to this point. It was simply the organic path that their union had taken. They would remain close friends and continue to co-parent their son.

And of course, Adele wanted to keep the whole thing on the down low like she always did. When the paparazzi had come to understand it, like her beloved Michael Corleone, Adele controlled what the world saw of her. No one had even seen a picture. No one had even seen a picture of her wedding. And when photos of her son were taken in secret and then sold, she sued and won five figures and damages. It's like Tony Montana said, you want to fuck with me? Okay, you cockroaches. But there was no keeping the divorce a secret. On Good Friday, 2019, news of Adele's divorce got out. It was all over the internet. Memed on social media. Everywhere you turned, Adele's personal life was suddenly under a microscope.

the fear was creeping back in. Fear that the public would do her dirty like they did Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston. Fear that her life would begin to spin out of control from this point forward. Fear of all the moments she'd have alone, missing those can't miss milestones, now that her son was splitting time between her and Simon. So she did what she always did when fear reared its ugly head. She crawled into her bed and turned on the television.

The screen flickered to life. The Sopranos was halfway through an old episode. Season two. Tony and the boys in the back room at the Bada Bing. Shooting dirty pool. And there's big pussy. Already a snitch for the feds, but no one can prove it just yet. Few or still want to believe it.

Hey, Sil, pussy says to Silvio Dante, played with gusto and grease by little Stephen Van Zan. I've been gone a long time. Let me hear it. Sill's mouth contorts like it's preparing to crush gravel. His head bobs slightly. He gestures sharply with his hand, and he does his best Pacino. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Two years later, in 2021, Adele was pulled back in, back into the spotlight, back onto the charts,

back to her original fear of performing on stage in order to promote her fourth out. album 30. These are fears that will never go away. You can't outrun them. You can't kill them. But Adele turned them into songs everyone else could relate to. And in turn, helped her survive a tabloid fate of disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

All right, everybody, thanks for checking out this episode on Adele. Adele's sophomore album 21. It sold something like 17 million copies. 17 million. Meaning that, I don't know. Everybody's got a copy of this album. But I don't.

And curious, which Blockbuster albums that are beloved by millions of people that sold tons of records do you not own? That this might not do anything for you. Nirvana's never mind. Happy Road by the Beatles. Albums I love, by the way.

Let me know. 617-90666-6-6-38 voicemail and text. Hit me up at Disgraceland Pod on the socials. Make sure you get automatic downloads turned on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode of Disgrace Land. Here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis,

The Exactly Right Network, and IHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, Thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com slash membership.

Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelandPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at DisgracelandPod. Rockerola. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah.

This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey.

With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they hit a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news.

What's the news? Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. How do we actually come up with a name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. We were talking about a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, Hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys.

Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. I'm Anna Navarro. on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. Every week I'm breaking down the biggest issues happening in our communities and around the world.

I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. The Justice Department threw, we counted four presidential. administrations failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.