Adele was shocked at intensity of the fan reaction over her decision to postpone her Las Vegas residency earlier this year, telling BBC’s “Desert Island Discs” host Lauren Laverne on Friday that the backlash left her a “shell of a person.”
Her January Instagram announcement that the Caesar’s Palace shows were not happening as planned was met with immediate outcry from ticketholders, and her tearful video was widely criticized.
“I definitely felt everyone’s disappointment and I was devastated and I was frightened about letting them down,” she told Laverne of the last-minute decision to shelve the residency, which would have run from January through April.
“I was a shell of a person for a couple of months. 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,” she continued, adding that the shows would be rescheduled “very, very soon.”
She also told Laverne, “I thought I could pull it together and make it work and I couldn’t, and I stand by that decision. 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. I’m like, the show’s not good enough.”
The Oscar-winning singer did not say exactly when the shows would be rescheduled, only that she is “working on it,” adding, “I’m not gonna update you if I ain’t got nothing to update you with because that just leads to more disappointment.”
In November, Adele performed a two-hour show at the London Palladium that aired on NBC in March. The audience was a who’s who of celebrity guests, including Idris Elba, Emma Watson, Samuel L. Jackson, Bryan Cranston, Dua Lipa, Mel B, Daniel Kaluuya, and Naomi Campbell.
