I half expected her to pull up a chair and ask the front row how their mums are doing. She pointed to the viewing platform where James Corden and Cameron Diaz were sitting and reminisced: “The amount of times I’ve been up there off my face singing to other artists at one of these shows…”. She stopped between songs to ask where the audience had come from, whether they were celebrating birthdays or anniversaries, if they were having fun. She asked the crowd if they wanted to hear “Make You Feel My Love” and when the response seemed approving, she played it (“We haven’t rehearsed this one so sorry if I forget the words”). She jumped headfirst into terrifying high notes (the end of “When We Were Young” made me involuntarily clutch my chest) but also pulled back when she needed to, responding to the musicality of each moment rather than giving off a vibe of over-rehearsal.įor an artist so toweringly famous, in fact, there was a devilish casualness about Adele’s live show. “I’m shitting myself,” she cackled, before launching into 30 track “I Drink Wine”.Īdele performs on stage at BST Hyde Park (Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Adele)Īs she settled into the groove of “I’ll Be Waiting”, she seemed to find her footing, and from that point onwards it was clear that her voice is in the best shape of her career.

Initially, her vocals were a little rocky – she is a famously nervy singer and is known for stopping songs and starting them again, though there was none of this last night, other than to get security help for crowd members – but right on form, she seemed to get over the nerves once she shared with the audience, like a mate who needs to get something off her chest. “Hello,” Adele sang, smiling, as she stepped out to perform her first major concert in five years. She headed up an all-female bill, which included Self Esteem, Kacey Musgraves – who brought out the sun performing tracks from her newest album star-crossed, the subject matter of which she described as “Divorce, babes”, using an Adele-ism as the occasion demanded – and Gabrielle, emerging just before 8:30PM.

So when her British Summer Time weekend was announced (she took over from last weekend’s headliners, The Rolling Stones and Elton John), the concerts sold out in minutes, across BST’s sometimes off-putting, aggressively implemented pricing tiers.

Since then she has released a fourth record, 30, but appeared only a handful of times, performing live for celebrity audiences in televised TV specials in both the UK and US (when Adele comes back, it might as well be a national holiday in Britain for how widely she is beloved). The last time Adele performed for the UK public – at Wembley Stadium – it was 2017, and she was touring her third album, 25. Her marathon two-hour show dripped charm and showcased vocals that had to be heard for their sheer power to be properly understood. On Hyde Park’s British Summer Time stage, in front of thousands, she earned that status all over again. That is her great gift – the dichotomy that has made her, at only 34, a bona fide national treasure. It’s just as easy to imagine her getting chucked out of a Pryzm night club before falling asleep on the night bus as it is to conceive of her standing before us in a halterneck and a chignon, like a diva of golden era Hollywood, singing note perfect from the depths of her pain, which is so much like our own that we are compelled to sing with her too. Her music is so feminine and it feels so deeply, but at the same time, to hear her speak, even onstage, her manner is raucous and conversational (at one point during last night’s comeback show at Hyde Park she announced point blank: “I’m going to be fucking knackered tomorrow”). Women love Adele because she is one of us and she is for us.

Adele returns from beyond space time