Adele has been forced to delay her three-month Las Vegas residency after Covid hit the production.
“I’m so sorry, but my show isn’t ready,” the singer announced in a tearful 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.”
The residency, titled Weekends with Adele, was due to begin on 21 January at the Colosseum in the Caesars Palace casino, celebrating her highly lauded album 30, which topped music charts in the UK, Australia and the US. Its first single, Easy On Me – an appeal to her ex-husband and young son for grace after she ended her marriage – broke records upon its release, becoming Spotify’s most-streamed song in a single day.
“I can’t give you what I have right now and I’m gutted and I’m sorry it’s so last minute,” Adele told fans. “We’ve been awake for over 30 hours now trying to figure it out and we’ve run out of time. I’m so upset and I’m really embarrassed and I’m so sorry to everyone that travelled to get [here].
“We’re going to reschedule all of the dates, we’re on it right now and I’m gonna finish my show and I’m gonna get it to where it’s supposed to be.”
Tickets to the show cost between $85 (£62) and more than $5000 (£3684) for platinum packages – before travel and accommodation in Nevada. Tickets in premium seating areas were selling for tens of thousands on resale websites.
Fans voiced their annoyance with the last-minute decision. “Not Adele rescheduling after already buying plane tickets, show tickets & getting a hotel room,” wrote one.
Another tweeted that “cancellations are written into her set list... Wembley, now Vegas. What about Hyde Park? Putting a show like this on in a pandemic and without a plan B wasn’t strategic.”
A British fan named David tweeted: “‘Christmas gift gone pear shaped as my wife and daughter are on the way to meet me in Vegas and unfortunately Adele has had to cancel.”
But Adele’s Instagram post also received support from sympathetic admirers. BBC Radio 1 DJ Greg James quoted “Adele’s own advice when she was on the radio with me a few months ago”: “Trust the process, go with your gut, it’s also Friday, so it’s the weekend! Cheer up! Wayyy ayyyy!”
The poet Amanda Gorman commented: “We love you – thank you for doing what is right even when it isn’t easy.”
Glennon Doyle, the self-help guru whose work proved revelatory to Adele after her divorce, posted: “Covid is killing us mentally because no one is showing us how to adjust our expectations of ourselves and others. We are killing ourselves trying to make things work like they worked in the old world and we can’t do it. We cannot make things work but it feels like we aren’t allowed to say that. Because no one is brave enough to say: No. this cannot be done right now. Enough. But you did, and it is going to free people, I swear to God. You are a beautiful leader even when you don’t know you are leading. Go easy on you.”
Other singers including Adam Lambert, the country star Reba McEntire and Pink also voiced their support. “Sweetheart I have been there,” Pink wrote. “The pressure is immense and I’m gutted for all of you. It will come together and it will be amazing when it does.”
Adele’s residency has been highly anticipated by fans and critics. The Guardian described her as a “slyly subversive fit for a Vegas residency”, bringing an album about the aftermath of blowing up her life to a “place synonymous with light entertainment and celebrating adult milestones”. She joins a lineage of artists including Elvis Presley, Celine Dion and Britney Spears to take up the Vegas mantle.
Vegas will also mark a shift towards more intimate shows for an artist known for her chatty, conversational style of touring, with the residency taking place in a relatively small 4,100-seat venue compared with Adele’s previous world tours. In 2017 she revealed to a stadium audience in New Zealand that “touring isn’t something I’m good at … I don’t know if I will ever tour again”.
