Adele Stands By Her Decision To Cancel Her Las Vegas Show 24 Hours Before Opening Night: "You Can't Buy Me For Nothing"
Adele is one of those A-list celebrities and singers that millions of people will line up for without question. That's why the world was shocked when she cancelled her Las Vegas show the day before it opened at the beginning of this year.
Adele was about to start a brand new residency in Las Vegas called "Weekends with Adele," and the opening show was meant to be on January 21. On January 20, Adele posted a video to her Instagram explaining that the show, which was supposed to run at Caesars Palace until April, simply wasn't ready to begin due to production delays.
“My show ain’t ready,” she said as she cried. “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.”
People had already arrived in Vegas to attend the opening show, so it came as a shock to many. Adele finally opened up about her decision and doubled down, saying she would make the same decision if she were able to turn back time.
Adele Stands by Her Decision To Cancel Her Las Vegas Show 24 Hours before Opening Night
In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Adele reflected on her shocking decision in Vegas. She thought she "could pull it together and make it work" but she simply couldn't. "I stand by that decision," she said.
“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’re going to lose loads of money,” she said. “I’m like, the show’s not good enough.”
But the decision wasn't easy and it left a dent in her life for a while. "I was a shell of a person for a couple of months," she said. “I just had to wait it out and just grieve it, I guess, just grieve the shows and get over the guilt, but it was brutal.”
Adele is fully aware that she's one of the only huge artists who has made a massive decision like this so late in the game, but she doesn't care whether it makes her look bad.
“I don’t think any other artist would have done what I did and that is why it was such a massive, massive story,” she said. “It was like, I don’t care. You can’t buy me, you can’t buy me for nothing.”
Even so, Adele said the backlash was "brutal" and "horrible," and she's doing her best to assure fans that her Vegas show will happen at some point later this year. “I could be someone on TikTok or Instagram Live every day, being like, I’m working on it — Of course I’m working on it!” she said. “I’m not gonna update you if I ain’t got nothing to update you with, because that just leads to more disappointment.”