Weekends with Adele
Weekends with Adele was the first concert residency by English singer Adele, held at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Initially scheduled to commence on 21 January 2022, she postponed it due to production delays and her team contracting COVID-19. Adele rescheduled the residency to begin on 18 November 2022, and after being extended, it was concluded on 23 November 2024. As part of it, she performed two shows at the venue every weekend.
The shows have a minimalistic beginning, with just Adele and a pianist, and later incorporate a band, background vocalists, an orchestra, and production elements like pyrotechnics, a waterfall, and a pool. Adele disappears in a vanishing act at the end of every show. Weekends with Adele received acclaim from critics, several of whom thought the rescheduled shows were worth the wait and praised the production and her vocal performance.
Background
In 2016, Adele embarked on her third concert tour, Adele Live 2016, which ran through multiple continents and lasted 121 shows. She closed the tour with a series of shows at Wembley Stadium, during one of which she passed a handwritten note to attendees admitting she may not tour again: "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 I wanted my final shows to be in London because I don't know if I'll ever tour again and so I want my last time to be at home." Adele cancelled the final two performances due to medical advice after she damaged her vocal cords. She would keep a low profile during the following years.Adele announced her fourth studio album, 30, on 13 October 2021, and announced it would be released on 19 November of the same year. On the day following the announcement, "Easy on Me" was released as the lead single from the album. In a November interview, Adele stated that she really wanted to tour in support of 30 but would most likely not do it: "This album? No, probably not. I'd love to. It doesn't sit right with me putting an album out this year and then touring it in 2023." She further denied rumours of an impending concert residency in an interview with Rolling Stone.
However, on 30 November, Adele announced the residency Weekends with Adele. It was planned to take place between 21 January and 16 April 2022, with Adele performing two shows at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas every weekend. The 100,000 tickets that went on sale sold out within six hours, resulting in an average gross of 2.2 million dollars per show. The Guardians Ben Beaumont-Thomas commented that since Vegas residences had been frequent among artists who were past their commercial peak, Adele was an outlier. But he thought it suited her situation due to its proximity to her son and his father's residence, her aversion to touring giant venues, and the intimate material on 30, which would resonate better with a smaller audience. It was also meant to circumvent the challenges posed to traditional concert tours by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Postponements
On 20 January 2022, one day before the residency was scheduled to begin, Adele uploaded a video of herself crying and announcing its postponement on Instagram. Adele cited half of her team having COVID-19 as a reason along with production delays, saying "I'm so sorry, but my show ain't ready. We've tried absolutely everything that we can to put it together we've been absolutely destroyed by delivery delays and COVID. Half my crew, half my team are down with COVID." Caesars Palace issued a statement supporting her decision to postpone and said they were confident that the rescheduled shows would "be extraordinary". The following day, Adele personally FaceTimed some fans at the hotel's gift shop to apologize.A few days later, Adele announced that she would be performing at the Brit Awards 2022. This was met with backlash from fans who were yet to receive refunds for the postponed shows and believed it to be "tone deaf". In a July 2022 interview, Adele described the reaction as "brutal". She recalled that "I was a shell of a person for a couple of months" and had trouble moving on from the incident. Nonetheless, she maintained that she stood by her decision: "You can't buy me, I'm not just going to do a show because I have to or because people will be let down or because we're going to lose loads of money." She appeared to give credence to media reports claiming she had "creative differences" with the original stage designer, Esmeralda Devlin, and Caesars Palace. British firm Stufish Entertainment Architects, co-founded by Mark Fisher, helped Adele redesign and revitalise the Weekends with Adele stage.
On 25 July 2022, Adele announced the 24 rescheduled shows, as well as 8 additional shows, which would now run from 18 November 2022 to 25 March 2023. Fans who had previously held tickets for the original dates or had been waitlisted for the Verified fan presale were prioritized. On 15 August 2022, Adele said the postponement "was purely an artistic decision". She subsequently added two New Year's Eve weekend shows which would take place 30–31 December 2022. In March 2023, Adele announced she would perform 34 additional shows from June to November of the same year. A concert film was also announced onstage by Adele. It was later recorded during the 30 June–1 July weekend dates. In October 2023, she added a final 32 dates, extending the residency until June 2024.
On 27 February 2024, Adele announced on social media that her 10 shows in March would be postponed to a later date due to health concerns.
Synopsis
A Weekends with Adele show spans more than two hours. The 20-track set list, the longest of her career until her Munich residency at 22, has the most songs from her second studio album, 21, and five from 30. The shows do not include any costume changes, but Adele dons a distinct floor-length black gown every weekend to make sure she remains "authentic" according to stylist Jamie Mizrahi. As of November 2022, Mizrahi had commissioned 20 gowns, from fashion houses including Maison Schiaparelli, for the residency. Adele also wore Harris Reed's first design for Nina Ricci, a custom gown by Stella McCartney, and brands like Versace, Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Paco Rabanne, and Proenza Schouler.The show commences with Adele performing a set of ballads. She comes out from a curtain of panels that resemble accordions and the shape of the letter A to perform "Hello", accompanied by just a pianist on the stage. Adele explained the minimalistic opening choice: "I wanted to start this small. And I wanted it to be all about me, obviously. That's why I came on and did 'Hello' with just me." During the chorus, 180-degree floor-to-ceiling screens are switched on and project four close-up images of her. "Easy on Me" is the second song on the set list, performed during the same set up with the piano. It can be described as the opening of her first act of the show showing off multiple lower tempo ballads. Adele follows this with the torch ballads "Turning Tables" and "Take It All". During "I Drink Wine", which closes the first act, a chandelier made of hundreds of glasses which sparkle with golden light drops into the space where she and her pianist have been performing, and the curtain of panels expands to reveal a band and background singers.
"Water Under the Bridge" is included approximately 30 minutes into the set list. It begins a section of more upbeat songs, so basically the second act performing lots of uptempo hits, before which Adele reminds the audience: "I don't have many uptempos, so if you want to dance, now's the time". She performs "Send My Love " under hot pink lighting, followed by "Oh My God". “One and Only“ opens the third act, including 2 midtempo ballads, “One and Only“ and “Don‘t You Remember“. "One and Only", Adele is joined by three background vocalists who sing its main vocals while Adele performs its operatic backing vocals under a faint spotlight. She then does her famous t-Shirt gun. Further on, she sings "Don't You Remember" and "Rumour Has It". During "Skyfall", Adele performs with an orchestra of 24 string players, arranged as eight in three rows each and lit from a previously dark part of the stage. "Hometown Glory" and "Love in the Dark" are the next songs on the set list. She briefly vacates the stage to allow for production elements to be set up for the following performances, while a pre-recorded video of her singing "Cry Your Heart Out" is presented on the screen.
The "Set Fire to the Rain" performance incorporates pyrotechnics and a stage-wide waterfall; raindrops fall on the stage and a fire starts burning under a white piano, spreading throughout the stage before covering the piano. Towards the end of the performance, the piano sinks into a small pool of water. Adele sings "When We Were Young" while walking through the audience and asking about their favourite childhood memories, as confetti with Polaroid pictures from her life falls upon them. During "Hold On", the theatre is adorned with glimmering light as numerous lanterns descend from the rafters. It closes the act before an encore of 3 songs begins, including 2 of Adele's most popular hits and the closing song of her album “30“, “Love Is a Game“. While Adele performs "Someone like You" and "Rolling in the Deep", joined by three background vocalists during the latter, the cameras change direction and the audience members are projected on the screens. During „“Rolling In The Deep“, Adele performs a little dance together with her 3 backup vocalists, leads a singalong and lets a piano explode while confetti is shorting in all directions of the colosseum. The show closes with "Love Is a Game", during which she is accompanied by an instrumentation of strings and organ. Adele performs on the pastel-coloured stage, as heart-shaped confetti falls and inspirational messages are displayed, before disappearing into the confetti in a vanishing act.