Adele
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Adele made her long-awaited Las Vegas residency debut over the weekend, and Katie & Keith — the co-hosts of the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast — were lucky enough to be in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace for Friday’s night 1 of Weekends With Adele.
On the latest episode of the podcast (listen below), Katie & Keith talk all about our experience inside the intimate concert and discuss the purposeful production choices and sweeping vocal performances that made the residency more than worth the wait.
But wait, there’s more! The Pop Shop duo then flew back to Los Angeles to attend Elton John’s second-to-last U.S. tour stop at Dodger Stadium, and the new podcast takes listeners inside that monumental concert as well.
Listen below:
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Taylor Swift reigns supreme on both the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 yet again with Midnights and “Anti-Hero,” respectively, how David Guetta and Bebe Rexha hit the top 10 on the Hot 100 with “I’m Good (Blue),” how Louis Tomlinson scores his highest-charting album yet on the Billboard 200 with the top five debut of Faith in the Future, and how Bruce Springsteen and Nas rack up new top 10 albums on the chart.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard‘s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
Adele will be ringing in the new year with her fans.
The beloved British singer-songwriter took to social media on Sunday (Nov. 20) to announce two additional New Year’s Eve weekend shows as part of her just-launched Weekends With Adele residency at Las Vegas’ Colosseum at Caesars Palace.
“New Years Eve has always been a let down for me, I seem to always end up spending it in a car on my way to or from somewhere! But not this year!!” Adele captioned a celebratory photo on Instagram of herself sporting 2023 glasses and popping a bottle of champagne.
The superstar added, “I’ll be ringing 2023 in on stage!! I dress up to the nines on NYE and I would love it if those of you that come would too! Let’s go all out black tie vibes.”
The newly added concerts will take place on Dec. 30 and 31. The presale for those registered through Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program will begin at 10 a.m. PT on Wednesday (Nov. 23).
Billboard was in attendance for the spectacular opening night (Nov. 18) of Adele’s residency, where the singer mesmerized the Sin City crowd with performances of her chart-topping hits and showcased her brilliantly bawdy sense of humor. Check out our “7 Best Moments” and “Funniest One-Liners” posts. Weekends With Adele runs through March 25, 2023.
See Adele’s New Year’s Eve weekend shows post on Instagram below.
It’s no secret that Adele has one of the most respected voices in music and can write a heartbreaking ballad with the best of them. But what music fans only aware of her chart-topping hits from the radio might not know is just how hysterical she is.
At opening night of her new Weekends With Adele residency in Las Vegas, there were countless moments of Adele’s brilliantly bawdy sense of humor, with the F-bombs flying freely as she briskly bantered with the crowd between songs in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.
In Billboard’s seven best moments from the show, we highlighted one such moment when she hilariously focused on her love for a certain AMC show.
“I’ve got a lot to tell you. It’s a bloody massive week for me, this week,” she said. “It’s the Walking Dead finale on Sunday! Do we have any Walking Dead fans here?” She was surprised to get a lot of feedback, thinking the opening-night group might be a little too highbrow for the zombie show. “Oh! I thought this was going to be a stiffer crowd than that. I’ve been obsessed with The Walking Dead for like over a decade, and on Sunday it’s all coming to an end.
“And obviously it’s opening night, and it was the Grammys [nominations], and it’s the World Cup — f—ing hell, there’s a lot going on!” she said, offhandedly mentioning the seven 2023 Grammy nods she picked up on Tuesday and her beloved England squad playing in the global soccer tournament starting Sunday.
But that was just the tip of the chatty iceberg. Below, find Billboard’s favorite one-liners and between-song banter from night 1 of Weekends With Adele.
We’ll never know what Adele’s Las Vegas residency looked like back in January when she tearfully canceled the shows on the eve of opening night. But after Friday’s (Nov. 18) first performance of Weekends With Adele at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace, we know exactly what it looks like now: utterly and breathlessly spectacular.
The beloved British singer/songwriter addressed the cancellation toward the end of the two-hour-plus concert, calling it “the worst feeling I’ve ever had but the best decision I’ve ever made.” It’s hard to argue with her after seeing all the massive technical flourishes and tiny thoughtful touches that color the 20-song set. It’s clear that Adele lovingly dedicated the past 10 months to creating the intimate show of her dreams, and the lucky 4,000-plus fans who got to be in the room returned the love tenfold, reducing the singer to tears more than once throughout the poignant night.
“I’m truly sorry for any inconvenience or any disappointment that I caused,” she told the crowd. “But we’re here tonight, together.”
Of course, the show wasn’t all waterworks – this is Vegas, after all, and this is Adele, whose concerts frequently double as a stand-up comedy routine, with her trademark cockney one-liners and between-song banter. She also wielded a T-shirt gun to launch merch, a handwritten note and a $50 bill for cocktails to four fans, seamlessly working in a Rambo reference between her heart-achingly personal breakup ballads. And the audience got out of their seats on more than one occasion too, with Adele reminding the crowd ahead of “Water Under the Bridge”: “I don’t have many uptempos, so if you want to dance, now’s the time.”
But the true centerpiece of any Adele performance is her inimitable voice, and on Friday, her powerful and nimble vocals sounded up to the challenge of carrying two shows a weekend into the new year and beyond — and when she needs a break, her fans are always more than happy to sing every word.
As she kicks off five months of shows in Sin City, come inside the room with Billboard for the seven best moments of Weekends With Adele opening night.
Back in January, in a tearful video posted to Twitter, Adele canceled her original Las Vegas residency dates the night before the Weekends With Adele concerts were set to open. Ten months later, she once again fired up her Twitter account on the night before her rescheduled residency is set to kick off — but this time, it was to marvel at just how excited and anxious she is for her Sin City shows.
“I’m feeling all sorts as I write this,” Adele started a series of four tweets on Thursday night (Nov. 17). “I’m highly emotional, incredibly nervous but can’t sit still because I’m so excited. I feel a million miles away from home, I can’t stop thinking about when I was little and saw Tom Jones in Mars Attacks and thought blimey how did he get from Wales to Las Vegas!?
“I always get scared before shows, and I take it as a good sign because it means I care and means I just want to do a good job,” she continued. “Maybe it’s because I didn’t start when I was supposed to. Maybe it’s because it’s opening night, maybe it’s because Hyde Park went so great, maybe it’s because I love the show, I don’t know. But it’s safe to say I’ve never been more nervous before a show in my career, but at the same time I wish today was tomorrow! I can’t wait to see you out there x.”
The thread came alongside a photo of the 34-year-old British singer/songwriter inside the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, holding a mic and standing amid the seats that will be filled with 4,000-plus adoring fans come Friday night. Behind her on the stage is a giant video screen projecting images of the star as a little girl and as a baby, similar to the projections that played as she sang “When We Were Young” during her Oprah-hosted Adele One Night Only TV concert special late last year.
It’s a big week for Adele, who also scored seven nominations for the 2023 Grammy Awards on Tuesday, including album of the year for her 2021 project 30 and record and song of the year for lead single “Easy on Me.”
Find Adele’s residency dates here, and see just how excited she is to get this thing started below:
I feel a million miles away from home, I can’t stop thinking about when I was little and saw Tom Jones in Mars Attacks and thought blimey how did he get from Wales to Las Vegas!?— Adele (@Adele) November 18, 2022
maybe it’s because Hyde Park went so great, maybe it’s because I love the show I don’t know. But it’s safe to say I’ve never been more nervous before a show in my career, but at the same time I wish today was tomorrow! I can’t wait to see you out there x— Adele (@Adele) November 18, 2022
Adele and Beyoncé are headed for a rematch. At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 12, 2017, the two singers went head-to-head in four categories, including the Big Three (album, record and song of the year). Adele won all four of these contests.
In the nominations for the 65th annual Grammy Awards, which were announced on Tuesday (Nov. 15), Bey and Adele are again competing in each of the Big Three categories. Adele’s 30 is vying with Bey’s Renaissance for album of the year. Adele’s “Easy on Me” is competing with Bey’s “Break My Soul” for both record and song of the year.
This isn’t the first time two artists have competed multiple times for album of the year as lead artists. Two pairs of all-time greats went head-to-head for album of the year three times.
With the number of album of the year nominees having jumped from five to eight in 2018 and then from eight to 10 in 2021, we’ll likely see more such recurring matchups. But it will be hard to top the rivalry between Adele and Beyoncé, who are both world-class artists as well as, by all accounts, friends and mutual admirers.
In her 2017 acceptance speech for the final award of the night, album of the year, a highly emotional Adele all but handed the Grammy to Beyoncé, who was standing in the front row with her husband, Jay-Z, as the audience rose to its feet to celebrate Adele’s win. Adele’s speech stands as one of the most selfless and gracious in awards show history.
After some introductory thanks, Adele addressed the issue of competing with a friend and an artist she greatly admires. “I can’t possibly accept this award and I’m very humbled and I’m very grateful and gracious, but my artist of my life is Beyoncé and this album to me – the Lemonade album – was so monumental.”
Addressing the singer directly, she continued: “Beyoncé, it was just so monumental and so well thought-out and so beautiful and soul-baring and we all got to see another side to you that you don’t always let us see, and we appreciate that. And all us artists here, we fu—ing adore you. You are our light. And the way that you make me and my friends feel – the way you make my Black friends feel – is empowering. And you make them stand up for themselves and I love you. I always have and I always will.”
Beyoncé didn’t go home empty-handed that night. She won two Grammys – best urban contemporary album for Lemonade and best music video for “Formation.” And she has won seven more Grammys since that night.
Take a look at all artists who have, as lead artists, competed against each other for album of the year two or more times. We start with the pairs who competed three times, followed by the pairs who vied twice.
Call her Agent A. Adele spent her Halloween channeling Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones from Men in Back and dancing to Rihanna.
In a video posted by a fan page on Tuesday, the superstar is seen getting down to RiRi’s 2010 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “What’s My Name?,” featuring Drake, on an empty dance floor with a male pal. As Adele swings her hair over her shoulders, she rocks a chic black suit, white shirt and tie a la the 1997 sci-fi movie starring Smith and Jones.
A separate tweet shows the “Easy on Me” songstress taking a photo with friends at the “Night of Terror” party in Los Angeles on Monday night. In the snap, she wears black shades and wields one of the famous “neuralyzers” that Agent K and Agent J use in the film franchise to erase people’s memories of their alien encounters.
A few days before Halloween, Adele dropped a music video for her latest 30 single “I Drink Wine.” During a Q&A with fans celebrating the release of the visual, she clued the world in on the fact that, apparently, we’ve all been pronouncing her name incorrectly since the start of her record-breaking career. (For future reference, it’s “Uh-del,” not “Ah-del.”)
Turns out the mispronunciation wasn’t the only thing to come out of the Q&A either. While she hasn’t had time to listen to Taylor Swift‘s Midnights yet, Adele praised her fellow superstar in response to another fan’s question, calling her “one of the greatest songwriters of our generation.”
Check out Adele’s Men in Black-inspired Halloween getup below.
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Time to pop the corks, because Adele took to social media on Tuesday (Oct. 25) to reveal that her music video for “I Drink Wine” will be arriving on Wednesday.
“The I Drink Wine video was the first one I shot for this album. And it’s finally coming out tomorrow!!” she tweeted. “I’m excited for you to see it and I can’t wait to see some of you tonight!”
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The announcement featured an eight-second teaser clip, in which a pianist is seen playing atop a curved bridge amid a magical, sunset-hued river landscape, as the 34-year-old singer floats on a boat beneath the bridge.
The I Drink Wine video was the first one I shot for this album. And it’s finally coming out tomorrow!! I’m excited for you to see it and I can’t wait to see some of you tonight! pic.twitter.com/6QpBDweAQk— Adele (@Adele) October 25, 2022
“I Drink Wine” is a fan-favorite track off Adele’s Billboard 200-topping album, 30, which was released in November. Following the album’s release, the singer sent all 12 tracks from the standard edition of her new LP onto the Billboard Hot 100 songs dated Dec. 4. “I Drink Wine” debuted (and peaked) at No. 18, and it remained on the chart for two total weeks.
The star went on to perform the track at the 2022 Brit Awards in February, marking Adele’s first Brit Awards performance in six years. The English pop superstar last took the stage in 2016 when she performed “When We Were Young” from 25.
Adele took home the first award of the evening when “Easy on Me” won song of the year. The song spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and its parent project 30 spent six weeks reigning atop the Billboard 200.