Category Archives: Adele

‘A bit bloody exciting’: Adele welcomes tens of thousands to epic Munich concert series

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The British singer’s 10 shows in a pop-up stadium will bring big revenues to the Bavarian city – but there are concerns over ticketing and the climate impact of ‘gig tripping’

Earlier this summer, with a little help from AI, Adele slipped into a Bavarian-style dirndl dress, cradled a very tall beer and held a giant soft pretzel aloft. “Not long now … Pack ma’s!” was the tagline, translating from Bavarian dialect as “Let’s do this!” Her groundbreaking, potentially record-busting Munich residency was only a few weeks off.

Her Adele in Munich spectacular is now set to begin on Friday, attracting fans from around the world to 10 shows during August at a custom-built pop-up stadium, while pointing a way forward for pop superstardom – a bold project that has sparked excitement and some controversy.

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Adele announces ‘big break’ from music

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Speaking to German media ahead of Munich concert residency, singer says she ‘wants to do other creative things’ and has no plans for new material

Adele has announced she intends to go on hiatus from music after a forthcoming concert residency in Munich.

The British singer told German broadcaster ZDF: “My tank is quite empty from being on stage every weekend in Las Vegas. I don’t have any plans for new music, at all.

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Adele says staying in sunny LA staves off seasonal depression

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Singer, who reportedly bought $58m property last year, says she also gets left alone in Los Angeles

Adele has said she is likely to stick around in Los Angeles because the sunny weather helps her stave off seasonal depression.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, she said the California city’s sunny weather was “good for me”. Los Angeles has an average of about 263 sunny days in the year.

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Beyoncé breaks record for artist with most Grammys in historic ceremony

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The singer took home four awards in a night that also saw major wins for Kendrick Lamar, Adele and Harry Styles

Beyoncé has become the most awarded artist in Grammys history during a historic evening in Los Angeles.

The singer, who was a late arrival at the ceremony after being stuck in traffic, won for best R&B song, best dance/electronic recording, best dance/electronic album and best traditional R&B performance. She has now won 32 Grammy awards.

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Grammys 2023: music’s A-list prepares for a potentially historic ceremony

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This weekend’s assemblage of the biggest names in music could make Beyoncé the most awarded artist in Grammy history with Adele and Harry Styles also tipped for success

It’s days before the curtain rises on the 65th annual Grammy awards ceremony and producer Ben Winston is putting the finishing touches on the production.

“I was doing the table plans last night, which is always a funny thing,” Winston said during a brief respite in between his obligations at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. “It’s like a bar mitzvah or a wedding, only you’re plotting where people like Beyoncé, Adele and the Rock are going to sit. Who’s Cardi B gonna be next to? It’s really fun.”

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‘Bawdy, emotional’: critics gush over Adele’s postponed Las Vegas show

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Singer thanks fans for ‘coming back to me’ and says she has never been so nervous as she launches residency

The nerves were all part of the show when Adele launched her long-awaited Vegas residency on Friday night. After the notorious rescheduling of her dates at just one day’s notice in January, it was never going to be possible to ignore the high stakes – even in a town built on colossal bets.

“I’m so nervous and I’m so scared and I’m so happy,” she said. “It might be a bit wobbly at times because my nerves are out of control … It’s a bloody massive week for me this week. It’s the Walking Dead finale on Sunday!” In an Instagram post on Thursday night, she wrote that she had “never been more nervous before a show”.

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‘It’s gonna be so beautiful’: Adele’s postponed Vegas residency begins

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The singer’s five-month-long residency is set to kick off with sold-out dates after it was cancelled with one day’s notice in January

After cancelling her Las Vegas residency with just one day’s notice in January, Adele is finally starting her much-anticipated set of concerts this weekend.

Weekends with Adele will stretch over five months at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, a venue that has previously hosted residencies from Celine Dion, Cher, Madonna and Elton John. It boasts a capacity of over 4,000.

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Worthy winners aside, the Brits is struggling to keep pace with modern pop

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TikTok voting and gaming stars haven’t altered the music awards’ predictable roster of chart-toppers

• News: Adele sweeps gender-neutral Brit awards
• Liveblog: Brit awards 2022 – as it happened

The actual Brit awards ceremony has changed its complexion over the years: from the old-guard backslapping of the 80s to the boozy chaos of the 90s and early 00s. Today’s offering is slickly professional – hipper than it once was, less tone-deaf when it comes to representation, but not a hair out of place to the point of seeming faintly uneventful, unless you count the sight of Anne-Marie falling over, or the sound of Ed Sheeran gamely attempting to turn Bad Habits into a metal anthem with the aid of Bring Me the Horizon: even the person in charge of the mute button for swearing had an easy night. There was a lot of talk from host Mo Gilligan about hedonistic behaviour, but not many actual signs of it. Nor did anyone attempt to say anything controversy-stirring or political.

This year, the onus appeared to have shifted slightly again. In what was clearly an attempt to attract a younger audience – an audience that don’t watch music shows on television – there were categories voted for by fans via TikTok; elsewhere, there were “afterparties” starring tweenage favourite PinkPantheress on gaming platform Roblox and the unmissable opportunity to buy Brits-related NFTs.

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‘They just worked’: reports of CDs’ demise inspires wave of support

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Format might not have romance of vinyl but its versatility and reliability will never be topped, say supporters

After languishing in his car boot for several years, Jordan Bassett’s CD collection – mostly dating back to his teenage years – will soon be on proud display in his newly converted home office space.

Bassett, a commissioning editor at the NME, has no means of playing the CDs and, in any case, his musical tastes have moved on. But the 100-150 thin, shiny 5in discs have sentimental value – and, who knows, one day they may be part of a revival similar to vinyl among music aficionados.

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Adele shares grief with fans by video call over postponed Vegas shows

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Singer extends apologies and tears by FaceTime and social media after Covid delays to her residency dates

Adele has personally apologised to fans after cancelling a series of highly anticipated shows in Las Vegas because of Covid production issues.

The singer addressed disappointed concert-goers, some of who had travelled in from around the world, via FaceTime after her residency was postponed at the last minute.

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‘My show ain’t ready’: Adele postpones Las Vegas residency

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Singer announces she is rescheduling Weekends with Adele show as half her crew infected with Covid

Adele has been forced to delay her three-month Las Vegas residency after Covid hit the production.

“I’m so sorry, but my show ain’t ready,” the singer announced in an Instagram post. “We’ve been absolutely destroyed by delivery delays and Covid. Half my crew … are down with Covid – they still are – and it’s been impossible to finish the show.”

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Go easy on me: why pop has got so predictable

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Adele, Ed Sheeran, Abba, Lana Del Rey and Drake all found success in 2021 by delivering more of the same – a result of how our chaotic lives, on and offline, are informing our taste

The biggest album launch of 2021 began with a social media statement tacitly assuring fans that nothing had changed. Adele was once more in a state of heartbreak – “a maze of absolute mess and inner turmoil … consumed by my own grief” – and that the contents of her album 30 would reflect that, as mired in romantic misery as its predecessors, 25 and 21. It was the musical equivalent, she said, of a friend who comes over “with a bottle of wine and a takeaway” to discuss the disastrous state of your love life.

The second-biggest album launch of 2021 was preceded by its creators proudly announcing they had written it “absolutely trend-blind”. Abba had traversed a considerable musical distance over the course of their original career, buffeted by the shifting musical trends of the 70s and early 80s – from the clompy Europop of their debut album to the sophisticated, chilly electronics of The Visitors, by way of glam and sleek disco – but Voyage would offer them preserved in amber, exactly as they were in the late 70s, unspoiled by any musical trends from the 40 years since their split.

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Security, intimacy and money: why Adele is going to Las Vegas

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Once a place ‘where careers go to die’, in Vegas you can see the big stars up close – and it makes sense for Adele

Las Vegas shows once conjured images of early-bird dinner specials, corny magicians and Cole Porter standards sung to happily clapping coach parties. But with another of the world’s biggest pop stars signing on to perform in the city, namely Adele, the Vegas concert residency is further cemented as a glamorous and lucrative rite of pop passage.

Her fourth album, 30, released last month, became the biggest-selling album of the year in the US after just three days on sale. That is the kind of popularity that warrants a stadium tour – indeed, she played to nearly 3 million punters across the 120-show stretch of her previous 2017-2018 world tour.

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Readers review Adele’s 30: ‘so powerful’ or a ‘depressive black hole’?

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It’s the biggest album of the year – and Guardian readers are split on whether Adele’s latest magnum mope-us is raw or overdone

It’s so upfront and honest. You know exactly the story she’s telling, and even if you haven’t experienced divorce yourself, you feel every word of it. Her voice is sounding better than it’s ever done, using so much more of her range – just listen to Love is A Game. Gone are the lofty metaphors that hint at heartbreak, replaced with extremely raw and naked lyrics that welcome you in to her experiences. I think it’s much more poetic than before. Best album so far.

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Adele’s 30 becomes biggest-selling album of 2021 in US after three days

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Album also outselling rest of UK Top 40 combined, while Taylor Swift’s All Too Well (Taylor’s Version) becomes longest song to reach US No 1

Adele’s 30 is already the biggest-selling album of the year in the US, just three days after it went on sale.

Using a metric that combines sales of vinyl, CDs and downloads alongside streaming, 30 has sold over 575,000 copies. Adele has overtaken the previous highest seller Taylor Swift, whose December 2020 album Evermore has sold 462,000 copies this year.

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‘She believed in every one of us’: ex-pupils on their inspirational teachers

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After Adele’s tearful reunion with a former teacher, four readers recall their own school memories

“So bloody cool, so engaging.” That’s how Adele described her English teacher at Chestnut Grove school in Balham, south-west London, Ms McDonald, when asked who had inspired her.

Answering a question from the actor Emma Thompson during ITV’s An Audience With Adele on Sunday, Adele said: “She really made us care, and we knew that she cared about us and stuff like that.”

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Adele interview bungle leaves Australian TV reporter ‘mortified’ and reportedly costs station $1m

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‘This is the most important email I have ever missed,’ Seven’s Matt Doran says after failing to listen to singer’s new album 30

A “mortified” Australian TV reporter has tried to explain how he bungled an exclusive interview with the singer Adele about her new album.

The host of Channel Seven’s Weekend Sunrise, Matt Doran, and a crew flew to London for the chat, which reportedly cost A$1m to secure and would have been Adele’s only Australian interview. After Doran conceded during the interview that he had only heard one track from her latest work, 30, the interview was canned.

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Glennon Doyle: ‘So many women feel caged by gender, sexuality, religion’

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Glennon Doyle’s memoir inspired Adele – but do we all need to be ‘untamed’?

The marriage wasn’t unbearable, but it didn’t feel right any more. The lightbulb moment came when she realised she needed to think about what she truly wanted, rather than about what society had trained her to think she wanted. Also, she became aware that remaining in an unhappy marriage meant she wasn’t being the parent she wanted to be: following her heart would cause heartbreak to her family now, but it had a noble purpose. Today, her ex lives within walking distance and they share parenting. She got out, and she wants to tell the world how it’s changed her life.

Who is this woman? Well, it could be Adele, whose new album reveals why she decided to leave her husband Simon Konecki, and what it means for their son Angelo, nine. “It just wasn’t right for me any more… I didn’t want to end up like a lot of other people I knew. I wasn’t miserable-miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first,” she said in a recent interview.

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Adele: 30 review – the defining voice of heartbreak returns

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(Columbia)
While the topic of her divorce is all-consuming, the singer seems to be pushing gently at the boundaries of what people expect of her

There is a sense in which 2021’s biggest single – 84.9m streams in a week on one platform alone; straight to No 1 in 25 countries; a song that received more first-week plays on US radio than any other song ever – wasn’t so much a comeback as an act of global reassurance. The world may recently have lurched from one unimaginable crisis to another, but Adele’s Easy on Me brought with it the message that at least one thing hasn’t changed: Adele Adkins is still heartbroken and belting it out over a gentle piano and tasteful orchestration.

Romantic despair became her global brand from the moment she stopped the show at the 2011 Brit awards with her tearful performance of Someone Like You. It catapulted her from the massed ranks of soul-influenced singers filling a gap created by Amy Winehouse’s inability to follow up Back to Black, to mind-boggling levels of success. There’s always the chance that millions of people might flock to an upbeat Adele album that depicts her full of the joys of spring, but clearly she wasn’t taking any chances last time around: for want of new unhappiness, 2015’s 25 returned to the same failed relationships that inspired its record-breaking predecessor 21. No matter – it sold 22m copies.

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Weight loss, deadlifts and divorce: what we learned from Adele’s One Night Only special

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In her TV concert special, the singer got personal in an interview with Oprah Winfrey about her dreams of a nuclear family, fixation with her weight loss and how much she can deadlift

Adele opened up about the pain of her divorce, losing the dream of a nuclear family, commentary over her weight and her strained relationship with her late father in a candid, ranging interview with Oprah Winfrey.

During the sit-down in Winfrey’s rose garden, recorded prior to her first concert in more than four years for the CBS special Adele One Night Only, the singer revealed she felt “embarrassed” that she couldn’t make her marriage to Simon Konecki “work”.

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