Neil Mccormick on Adele, the finale
‘Allo Wembley, I’ve never been so f---ing scared in my ’ole life,” announced the biggest star in the world to the biggest audience ever gathered in Wembley Stadium. “I’m sh--ing myself!”
It was the beginning of the end for Adele. A record-breaking 98,000 fans packed out the first of four nights at Wembley Stadium for a concert billed as “Adele the Finale”. These hometown shows for a combined audience of nearly 400,000 not only mark the climax to the superstar’s first (and, apparently, last) world tour but her retirement from touring altogether. Although just 29 years old and at the height of her popularity, the personable singer-songwriter has, it seems, never really taken to live performance, claiming high anxiety verging on stage fright.
“I just wanna eat take-aways and drink white wine,” she shrieked during a long humorous monologue about the abstemious rigours of preserving her voice on the road. “On Sunday I’m going to go wild, smoke some fags, drink whisky!”
Adele’s dislike of touring seems especially surprising because she is such a natural onstage. Despite constant protestations of nerves, punctuated with cheerful obscenities, she comes across as relaxed, chatty and charismatic, and always deeply engaged with her music and her audience.
She wore a voluminous, diaphanous purple gown, which she cheerfully complained was making it hard for her to breathe. “I’ve put on weight during a break from touring,” she confided, as if chatting to close friends – nearly 100,000 of them. On a tiered stage set up in the round at the centre of Wembley, with musicians hidden beneath the central circle, she looked a bit like a figurine on a very utilitarian wedding cake. Actually the huge circular stage most resembled the geometric monstrosity of U2’s 360 tour, a set up perhaps better suited to bombastic sci-fi rock than easy listening. But the sound was as big and clear as any rock band, the drums hit hard, the band sparkled and flowed and, as her nerves settled, Adele’s voice sailed high and clear, delivering every anthemic power ballad as if it meant the world to her.
She even briefly channelled her inner Bono in a heartfelt appeal for charity. Hometown, her very first 2006 single, was accompanied by shots of the London skyline eventually coming to rest on stark images of Grenfell tower. She spoke emotionally about the treatment of survivors, although perhaps with more of Bob Geldof ’s directness than his countryman’s diplomacy. “Instead of going and getting shitfaced at the bar, just donate.” A towering version of Bob Dylan’s
Make You Feel My Love was dedicated to the Grenfell residents, while the stadium lit up with a starry field of mobile phones.
There were big screens, confetti and fireworks but Adele’s biggest special effect is her personality. In a two-hour show, she chatted as much as she sang, drawing her audience in with the gift of empathy. She has a rare talent, shared with only a handful of stadium superstars, of making a big space as intimate as her own front room. The audience laughed at her patter and sang lustily along with her choruses, making an impressively huge choir of voices. Adele was in tears at the end as the weight of the event sank in. “I might never see you again at a live show but I will always remember this,” she gushed. But she also admitted “As of Monday morning, I’m solely a mum, I can’t f---ing wait.”
We’re going to miss her when she’s gone. But personally I suspect she gets too much out of this interaction to be gone for very long.