Adele has opened up about the ‘brutal’ reaction she faced after she was forced to cancel a number of concerts in Las Vegas earlier this year.
The singer, who performed in London’s Hyde Park on Friday and Saturday, 1-2 July, said she didn’t want to have to cancel the dates but was left with little option as it was ‘not good enough’.
However, Adele says the backlash from her cancellation was ‘horrible’ and that she was left feeling like a ‘shell’ of her former self.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Adele said she ‘felt everyone’s disappointment’ when she was forced to cancel and said the reaction was ‘brutal’.
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She told host Lauren Laverne: "I was frightened about letting them down and I thought I could pull it together and make it work, and I couldn’t.
“I stand by that decision. I don’t think any other artist would have done what I did, and I think that is why it was such a massive, massive story.
“It was like, ‘I don’t care’ and things like that. You can’t buy me. You can’t buy me for nothing. I’m not going to just do a show because I have to or because people are going to be let down or because we are going to lose loads of money. I’m like, ‘The show is not good enough’.
“Of course I could be someone on TikTok or Instagram Live every day being like, ‘I am working on it’. Of course I am working on it. I’m not going to update you if I haven’t got anything to update you with, because that just leads to more disappointment.
“Maybe that’s not been well balanced either… Maybe my silence has been deadly. I don’t know.
“But it was horrible and the reaction was brutal. I was a shell of a person for a couple of months.”
Revealing how she coped during the ‘horrible’ period, she added: “I just had to wait it out and just grieve it. Just grieve the shows and get over the guilt. But it was brutal.”
Adele had been set to play a string of dates in Las Vegas, but cancelled them at the last minute due to a large number of her team being struck down with Covid-19.
She also promised that all dates would be rescheduled, saying: "We've been up against so much and it just ain't ready. I'm so sorry.
"We've tried absolutely everything that we can to put it together in time and for it to be good enough for you.
"But we've been absolutely destroyed by delivery delays and COVID.
"Half my team, half my crew are hit by COVID. They still are and it's been impossible to finish the show."
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Claire Reid