“It’s so strange to be in front of a crowd,” Adele babbles midway through one of many motormouth banter segments. For her first public show in five years, what a crowd to be in front of. Sixty-five thousand of the 1.3 million people who applied for tickets – the biggest ticket demand since Oasis at Knebworth in 1996 – cram the barriers to the increasingly exclusive VIP zones, with Tom Cruise reportedly spotted in the ultra-mega-costs-a-kidney-platinum-plus enclave. There’s nary a glass of lambrusco or a box of Kleenex to be had this side of Watford.
Sweeping onto the world’s biggest 1970s variety show set – all shimmering drapes and cascading podiums of backing musicians – in a black gown, Adele is almost immediately overwhelmed by the occasion, asking the crowd to help sing “Hello” while she composes herself. The audience, meanwhile, are themselves overcome with relief. As the biggest-selling female artist of the century, Adele has also shown signs of the vertigo many suffer at the very top. In January, she cancelled a Vegas residency just 24 hours before the first show, citing pandemic-induced “staging problems”. “I take my singing very f***ing seriously,” she’ll explain later. For now, Hyde Park is just happy to have her in it.
