Adele: One Night Only
If you haven't watched the November 14th telecast, here is what happened.
Trust me when I say this: the distance between my kitchen and my room didn’t feel this faraway until today. I’d gone just for a minute to fetch my popcorn bowl, and Oprah Winfrey already started her introduction at the start of the show. By the time I put all my warm popcorn into a bowl, she was already at the end of her speech and said, “…the 15-time Grammy-winning icon, ADELE!” I had to run — and run fast.
A drone hovered over the venue in a twilight sky, giving the viewers a quick glance of the beautiful Griffith Observatory with its black domes, white walls, and concrete arches. The dying Sun was giving way to another star that was slowly making its way to the stage: Adele. She didn’t say a word. No greetings. No waving of hands (that she is so fond of). The music had already kicked in. Adele looked at her custom-made black Schiaparelli couture, glanced at her band, and closed into her mic.
“Hello! It’s me…”
As soon as she said those words, the walls of the observatory reverberated with the claps, cheers, and loud woo-hoo from the who’s who of the entertainment industry. There was Rich Paul, Seth Rogen, Ellen DeGeneres, Drake, ‘Pinkman’ Aaron Paul, and even Gordon Ramsay among the crowds. But the one among all, sitting on those white eggshell shaped curved benches, that warmed my heart was Melissa McCarthy. She couldn’t stop her tears from watching Adele performing. As Adele neared the end of her first of ten songs she’d performed that night, the dusky light painted her face with a pinkish hue.
Goosebumps!
Adele’s One Night Only concert, interspersed with her one-to-one interview with Oprah Winfrey. The interview, set amid Oprah’s splendiferous rose garden and which Adele commented as ‘so British,’ was an attempt to tap the many moods of the legendary singer—and what a way it did. On being asked about Hello, Adele promptly replied: “Always have to start with Hello. It’d be weird if it was, like, halfway through a set.” The singer came prepared for a bare-it-all interview, and there was no stopping her.
In October this year, Vogue dropped their flagship ‘73 Questions’ video with Adele on YouTube, in which she didn’t specifically answer when she was going live for a concert. “As soon as possible. I’m ready to go. It’s just up to the Covid-19,” she said. The video, uploaded on October 21st, has since garnered over 14 million views. Adele performed One Night Only on October 24th, among her selected few. For most of us it’d feel, a superstar of such stature, she would have no qualms performing live. But it was so not true. Even though at her best, Adele was visibly nervous at the start. After Hello, she took a break and acknowledged the crowd and said in her charming best, “…but I wanted to feel safe in my first little comeback thing. So I wanted to do a mixture of people I know and love, people that I’ve met a few times, and some of you I don’t know at all. But Hi!”
It was just ten minutes into the entire program, and I’d not even touched my bowl. When Adele sings, everything comes to a standstill. She was visibly anxious before her second performance, a song from 30 she hadn’t performed live until now. Easy On Me, which premiered on YouTube on October 15th, is already on fire. The Sun had already set; the lights were now simply on Adele. It was a sight to behold when Adele picked the tempo and hit those lines:
You can't deny how hard I've tried
I changed who I was to put you both first
But now I give up
30 means a lot to Adele, since this is her first album in six years. There is no denying that the lyrics of her songs reflect the pain (that Oprah rightfully mentioned as ‘all-consuming pain’) she felt in those years, in which she has lost her father, has come out of a broken marriage and has to deal with her son, Angelo, who is yet to come to terms with the thing called ‘divorce.’ On being asked by Oprah whether she would call it a divorce album, Adele said, “I think I’m divorcing myself on it. So, it’s lonely, you know.”
Credits to the one who decided on the playlist for the evening, since the whole sombre mood of the evening quickly vanished when the music for the Skyfall chimed in. Red LEDs, matched with the vibrancy of the sky, started glowing everywhere as Adele pointed to the sky and sang:
Let the sky fall
When it crumbles
We will stand tall
Face it all together
The discussion in the rose garden slowly veered towards Simon Koneki, Adele’s ex-husband. That Adele has the greatest respect for the father of her son, even after a failed marriage, says a lot about the person she is. “I think, probably, Simon saved my life. He came at such a moment, where the stability that he and Angelo have given me, no one else would ever have been able to give me,” Adele said about him. But a woman of her words, and the images that she paints with her voice, Adele always finds herself short of syllables in answering the question that her son asked: “Why don’t you love Daddy anymore?” Oprah knew a lot would come out if she tapped that question—and it did. Adele said she knows Angelo wouldn’t understand anything at this point, after all, he is a six-year-old child, and that Simon does understand this album is an ode to that part of her she left in that marriage. “I’ve to dig deep and tell my stories,” she said before the screen dissolved to the Griffith Observatory where she performed I Drink Wine, and two of her ‘golden oldies’: Someone like You and When We Were Young. The last song was accompanied by video projections on the wall, with photographs from her childhood. Quite a setting!
The second half of the concert began with a surprise. Adele told the audience that she had arranged a surprise for a guy called Quentin, who has been in a relationship with Ashley for seven years. The organizers of the concert got in touch with Quentin, and as planned, he arranged a date night with his girlfriend in Griffith Park. They were then picked up in a car and brought to the observatory. All this time, Ashley was wearing noise-cancelling headphones so that she couldn’t listen to anything other than the music in her cans. Adele was quite edgy, and so was the crowd. “If you make a noise, I’m going to kill you,” Adele quipped and ordered the lights to be lowered. When the couple appeared on the concrete walkway, everyone in the crowd was biting their nails. Quentin went down on his knees and proposed to Ashley, and as she said yes and removed her blind cover, she was in for the shock of her life. Some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities and Adele, herself, stood witness to their proposal. A teary-eyed Melissa McCarthy couldn’t stop herself from crying as she made way for the couple to join in the first row. Adele dedicated her next song, Make You Feel My Love, to this lovely couple. Quite an irony, since Adele tried balancing the sadness in her heart by throwing a surprise at a couple who wanted to get married.
When Oprah questioned Adele about her tremendous transformation and the negativity she had to deal with in social media regarding her weight loss, the singer remained unperturbed. She answered, “…it just became my time. Me having a plan every day when I had no plans.” Mincing no words, the singer said she wasn’t bothered about the weight at all, but the process of getting her mind right was what contributed to the whole process, and that she wasn’t fazed by the negativity, because throughout her career people have objectified her body.
Before the screen took the viewers back to the venue, Adele spoke her heart out while discussing the song, Hold On. Speaking about her marriage, Simon, and Angelo, she said she never questioned herself about making a bad decision. “It’d have been better, had I just kept my mouth shut.” It was easy to feel that unsettling vibe in her voice when she sang:
I swear to God, I am such a mess
The harder that I try, I regress
I'm my own worst enemy
Right now I truly hate bein' me
Every day feels like the road I'm on
Might now, open up and swallow me whole
The worst Adele felt wasn’t talking about her failed marriage, but her estranged relationship with her father, who passed away in April this year. Her father never listened to her songs all these years, except Hometown Glory, which Adele wrote when she was 16. Towards the end of his life, he’d listened to all of her albums: 19, 21, and 25. Adele even played the newest one through Zoom, early this year, which she believed was a kind of healing for both of them. But what caught Oprah’s attention, and mine too, was what her father said before he passed away. Adele’s eyes welled up with tears when she said, “My father wished he had done what I had been doing.” Oprah Winfrey took control of the situation and swerved the conversation towards Rich Paul, with whom Adele is dating right now. When Oprah said, “This relationship is the first time you’ve actually…” Adele promptly jumped in and said, in her poetic best, “…loved myself and being open to loving and being loved by someone else.”
Adele believed this album was for her son, Angelo, who’d find all the answers he was searching for now in the lyrics of 30. Before the screen cut to the observatory, Adele ended the interview with Oprah with an insightful answer to a question on her next song, Love Is a Game. “I don’t expect someone else to give me stability. Be a solid house that doesn’t blow over in a storm.”
I collected the few remaining bits of corn with pepper as Adele took the stage for one last song, Love Is a Game. This was certainly one of her splendid performances. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest music stars of the 21st century, Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, pulled the curtain down on a scintillating evening—with the twinkling lights of Los Angeles in the background—by saying, “You can’t control bloody anything. So just go with it. Sit with it. Have a laugh and enjoy all of it.”
What makes Adele so lovable and accessible is the ability to reveal her soul through her talk and her songs. Every time you hear her chirp about her favourite things makes you feel you aren’t watching or listening to a legend — but a girl next door.
Now I want to listen adele more after reading your piece. Well written piece brother. Keep up the good work. Much love.❤️☮️