Ah, the music industry and conspiracy theories. They go together like peanut butter and jelly, John and Yoko, Princess Diana and Morrissey, Adele and Sam Smith, apparently. Following on from 2017’s conspiracy theories that alleged, among other things, that Avril Lavigne had died and been replaced by a lookalike and that Robyn’s hits Call Your Girlfriend and Dancing on My Own are about the same night from different perspectives, 2018’s first major music conspiracy theory is that Adele and Sam Smith are the same person.
Okay, let’s unpack this one.
Arguably, we suppose they do have some things in common. They are both singers, they’re both from London(ish), they’re both massively successful. Have they been seen in the same place at the same time? It’s unclear. But Twitter is convinced they’re actually one artist and are intent on fooling us all. It all started when someone slowed down Adele’s Hello on vinyl and found it sounds admittedly, an awful lot like Sam Smith’s voice.
Adele and Sam Smith aren’t the first to fall prey to the ‘slowing down a record’ conspiracy either. There’s also the theory that if you speed up Bruce Springsteen it’s Stevie Nicks, and that if you slow Kylie Minogue down, it’s Rick Astley. Does this mean that basically the music industry is only around three to five people in a recording studio, speeding up and slowing down their own voices? Stranger things have happened…
