19
Adele
Despite the endless comparisons, Adele is not "The New Amy Winehouse." They're both English and have enormous jazz voices, but to say they're the same is like saying Avril Lavigne and Celine Dion are the same because they're both Canadian and have ankles. More than anything else, Adele falls into the category of "singer/songwriter," both writing down in verse the intricacies of her lovelorn mental muddle and relating it by way of her husky yet agile voice and stinging, feisty tongue. Titled after her age when recording it, the album plays like pages of a nice school girl's diary and the liner notes of which cite disparate influences like Etta James, Björk, Billie Holiday and Jeff Buckley. Perfect "alone time" music.
