Videos of a teenaged Adele performing and hanging out with pals in 2004, her days at the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology, have surfaced online. Leave it to the Sun to dig up something this personal (read: accept the contents of a crappy ’00s flip phone from one of her particularly chatty school friends, Allan Rose), but it’s hard not to be fascinated by how punk-rock-meets-theater-geek Adele was at 16, launching into angel-voiced riffs while hanging out (and smoking! tsk tsk!) with friends during breaks like it was no big deal.
Back in 2008, when her first record 19 went platinum at No. 1, Adele told Billboard a few things about the time when the Sun‘s videos were filmed, including that she and classmates (including Leona Lewis and Jessie J) learned how to record and produce their own demos in BRIT school courses. She was almost as DGAF-badass in 2008 as she was back in 2004, but it’s clear from her Grammy acceptance speech this year that that era of Adele is probably over, now that she’s begun to evolve as a songwriter and performer. Sniff. At least she’s made it very clear she’ll be sassy forever.
Check out the footage on the Sun‘s site here
