Kicking off the first night of her Munich residency with Hello, Adele World is officially open.
Just moments before the superstar arrives on her custom-built stage, thunderclouds crack overhead, mercilessly drenching the crowd in rain and hail. So this is the downside to playing in an open air pop-up stadium in Europe at the height of summer.
As fans stand in soggy plastic ponchos and wringing out items of clothing, Adele rises front of stage like a vision from Hollywood. All bouncing blonde curls, winged eyeliner and beaming nude lip. Adele is flawless from every angle - no mean feat considering she’s beamed on what’s been touted as the biggest and sharpest concert screen ever made behind her.
By second track Rumour Has It, Adele screams for her band to pause seconds into the thumping beat. “I came in too early!” she cries. “I underestimated how f**king scared I am,” she adds, taking a big breath.
The Dior train attached to her gown has to come off next. Adele calls for assistance after struggling to manoeuvre her humongous stage with a sodden cape. “I checked the weather before I came on and it said no rain so I put on this dress. Now I look like a right fanny,” she laughs.
The opener is a perfect encapsulation of diva Adele and the straight-shooting north-Londoner that talks to any size crowd like she’s chatting to one of her mates.
Spotting a couple in the crowd after Water Under the Bridge Adele leaps into action, stopping the show to help a proposal. “How long have you been together?” she asks. “17 years f*ck me, what took you so long?”
The rest of the concert features everything you’d expect from an Adele show from dazzling pyrotechnics, a flawless live orchestra and spine-tingling vocals. However, there’s a nervousness about Adele tonight.
It’s been a while since she’s performed on such a large scale. When she leads into Someone Like You she admits at the time of writing what’s become her biggest break-up ballad it was the ‘lowest she’d ever felt.’ “I should have told my younger self it gets much, much worse” she jokes.
But without her heartache, Adele insists she would not be where she is now- standing in front of the largest crowd she’s played to in eight years on her own personalised festival site.
The 36-year-old has made no secret of the fact she fell out of love with touring following a meteoric rise to the big time.
Her recent residency at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace gave Adele the chance to reconnect with fans on a much smaller scale. The 4,000 capacity theatre was worlds away from the stadiums she’d been used to commanding since the release of pivotal album 21.
While she was selling out tours and smashing records the world over, behind the scenes, Adele was undergoing a painful split with her husband Simon Konecki and navigating a new single life in Los Angeles while raising her young son. She is now rumoured to be engaged to American sports agent Rich Paul.
Winding up what became her last long and gruelling world tour on home soil at Wembley Stadium in 2017, Adele added a handwritten note to the programme hinting it might be the last time fans saw her live. “Touring is a peculiar thing, it doesn’t suit me particularly well. I’m a real homebody and I get so much joy in the small things. Plus, I’m dramatic and have a terrible history of touring,” she wrote.
In a twist of fate, Adele was then forced to cancel the final two dates to undergo emergency surgery on her damaged vocals. The knock sent Adele into hiding.
Five years later she was back with brand new heartbreak album 30, this time detailing the fallout from her divorce. It was swiftly followed up with the announcement of Weekends with Adele, a Las Vegas residency following in the footsteps of her idol Celine Dion.
Just days before she was due to start the multi-million dollar project, there was another blow as an ‘embarrassed and upset’ Adele revealed she was postponing the much-hyped show saying she couldn’t go on when it ‘just wasn’t ready.’
Referencing the drama in Munich this evening, she calls the fiasco a "s**t show", and admits “I wouldn’t be here now if that didn’t happen. I could not carry on doing this if I’d done a show that I didn’t believe in.”
After eight long years away, where better to stage a European comeback than in the country that’s just hosted the Euros and with the Olympic Games ‘next door’, Adele declared back in January.
“Plus it’s cheaper than going to Vegas,” one Brit fan who has made the journey notes.
This is by no means any regular outdoor pop concert. For her latest feat Adele has made a corner of the Bavarian city her own with the creation of Adele World. A slice of London on the outskirts of Munich, complete with a traditional English boozer, seaside fairground rides and a stage for a Spice Girls cover band. What could be more British than that?
Fans sip pints in a pub said to be modelled on The Good Ship in Kilburn, where Adele performed her early gigs, or hang out in the impressively stocked I Drink Wine bar, named after one of her recent album tracks.
There’s also a Biergarten with a German Oompah band and tankards of beer on offer so even the locals feel at home.
That’s before fans have even got inside the 80,000 capacity stadium that remarkably did not exist months ago. "I'd only trust the Germans with this," jokes Adele about the incredible turnaround.
For ten nights the vast Munich Messe exhibition centre has been transformed into a state of the art arena fit to host one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. A record-busting 220 metre wide and 30 metre high LED screen - the largest ever made - wraps around the crowd 'like a hug', says Adele who proudly boasts of her own input in the design. While a 93-metre catwalk and 200-metre semi-circular walkway to a second stage brings Adele as close as possible to her fans. Though she admits she’s had to put in the work to get ready for it. “I think I'll get a good four or five miles in a night, walking. So I really need to get my stamina up!" joked Adele before her opening night, saying she’s ‘back at the gym like nobody’s business.”
A summer stint in Germany might seem ‘a bit random’, in Adele’s own words. She is yet to finish her highly acclaimed Las Vegas residency and her last album 30 came out in 2021. When she announced the surprise dates, Adele said the decision was sparked by a desire to ‘end a beautiful phase of her life and career.’
Her ultra-modern new digs in Munich might not have the history or old school charm of Caesars Palace, but the purpose built venue provides Adele with the perfect setting to deliver her anthemic ballads on a grand scale while maintaining the intimate connection with her fans.
So what next for the pop star? Before taking to the stage she told a German newspaper she was looking forward to a break from performing altogether. "My tank is quite empty at the minute,” she admitted. “I don’t have any plans for new music at all. I want a big break after all this and I think I want to do other creative things just for a little while.”
Seeing her on dazzling form tonight, it’s clear to see Adele still holds a torch for her first love of music, despite a few heartaches along the way.
Setlist
Hello
Rumour Has It
I Drink Wine
Water Under the Bridge
Easy on Me
One and Only
I’ll Be Waiting
Oh My God
Send My Love (to Your New Lover)
Hometown Glory (With Orchestra)
Love in the Dark (with Orchestra)
Make You Feel My Love (Bob Dylan cover)
Chasing Pavements
All I Ask
Skyfall (With Orchestra)
Set Fire to the Rain (With Orchestra)
Hold On
When We Were Young
Someone Like You
Rolling in the Deep
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