People who were watching the 2008 BRIT Awards enjoyed a rare treat: back to back performances of a new artist named Adele and the incomparable Amy Winehouse. Likely those viewers didn’t know that they were watching history in the making. Adele, who was only 19 years old at the time, was destined for superstardom, and Amy would be dead within three years. Now known worldwide, Adele at the time of this video was still very young and fresh and probably a little nervous. And rightly so. She knew that a legend was going to be following her up. However, Adele never fails to deliver, even when she was first getting started in her career.
In 2008, Adele had just graduated from BRIT School a couple of years earlier. The year before the 2008 BRIT Awards, she received the Brit Awards Critics’ Choice Award, and she also won the annual BBC Sound of 2008 poll. Her first album, titled “19,” had just been released and was a commercial and critical success. As of this writing, the album has been certified platinum eight times in the United Kingdom and three times in the United States. But the Adele you see here is the Adele before she won an Academy Award, 15 Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, three Ivor Novello Awards, and many more accolades and awards.
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And then, Amy. Dear Amy. There’s never been anyone quite like Amy Jade Winehouse, and probably never will be again. On that night in 2008, she was the Amy before everything went downhill. She still had some control of her performances and hadn’t yet gotten to the worst of her addictions. She was using drugs, and her bulimia had taken a toll on her body, but she still performed beautifully. When Amy Winehouse came on the stage that night looking very thin but still exotic with her beehive hairstyle, the crowd went wild, and the entire atmosphere of the venue changed. It became electrified. Sadly, the world lost the troubled genius that was Amy Winehouse on July 23, 2011. She was only 27 years old. Her legacy includes a lot of big-name stars who say they were influenced by Amy’s music. Just a few are Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Adele herself, Billie Ellish, and more.
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Watch below the rise of one legend and the last great moments of another.
