On 21 March 2008, when Adele was just a fledgling singer-songwriter, she appeared on the US radio show Morning Becomes Eclectic at the KCRW studios in Santa Monica, California, to promote her recently released debut album '19'. As well as talking to Nic Harcourt, she performed a lot of the songs from the album in a stripped-down format, with just piano or guitar backing, which allowed her vocals to shine through. On 17 November 2008 she was back, chatting again with Nic Harcourt and playing more songs from '19'. Three years later she was a household name, but agreed to return to KCRW studios on 25 February 2011 to talk about her sophomore effort '21' with Jason Bentley, and as well as playing songs from that record in the same way that she had the previous times, she returned to '19' for a couple of songs that she'd missed the first time. This meant that she had performed ten of the twelve tracks from that debut in an acoustic setting, and so when I tracked down a similar version of 'Best For Last' I though it would be good to hear what the whole album would sound like acoustically. The only track that she didn't perform that way was 'Tired', but she did add a couple of covers in those first two sets, and so I've replaced 'Tired' with her take on Etta James' 'Fool That I Am', and added Sam Cooke's 'That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On' as a bonus at the end. I know that Paul over at Albums That Should Exist posted these tracks a few years ago, but he included all of the songs from all three sessions, plus the chat in between, whereas I just wanted to hear '19' in all it's stripped-down glory.
Track listing
01 Daydreamer
02 Best For Last
03 Chasing Pavements
04 Cold Shoulder
05 Crazy For You
06 Melt My Heart To Stone
07 First Love
08 Right As Rain
09 Make You Feel My Love
10 My Same
11 Fool That I Am
12 Hometown Glory
13 That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On
