Dear Gossips,
Billboard yesterday confirmed the inevitable – Adele’s “Easy On Me” has topped the Hot 100 and is also the #1 song in the world. As I’ve been saying, this is Adele season and she’s only just getting started, because the album won’t be out for another three weeks.
30 drops on November 19 and her CBS special, Adele One Night Only will air November 14, featuring an interview with Oprah and a performance featuring tracks off the new album and a selection of her previous hits. According to Page Six, the mini-concert was filmed on Sunday outside the Griffith Observatory in LA in front of 300 people that included her son and her ex-husband Simon Konecki. There were also a lot of celebrities: Kris Jenner, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, Lizzo, James Corden, Gordon Ramsay, Gayle King, and Sarah Paulson. Which is interesting because everyone’s been talking about how Adele is Sarah’s twin. So, presumably, at some point in the special, that’s going to come up – and we’ll get an in-person side-by-side.
Then there’s Drake, who was also there after celebrating his birthday over the weekend. Drake has referred to Adele as “one of my best friends in the world” and Adele said in an interview recently that when she was working on the album, he was maybe the only person she played it for to get his opinion:
"I played it to Drake last year when he was in town," she shared. "And I was like, ‘Is this what people want, or not want?' And he said, ‘Absolutely,’ but that’s it really.'"
She also said on IG Live a couple of weeks ago that Drake’s Certified Lover Boy is her favourite album of 2021.
Curious to see then how much camera time Drake will be getting during the special, if any at all – and it would be totally up to him, because it’s not like Oprah and the producers wouldn’t want to show him. I can’t picture Drake not wanting to be part of it though. Drake always knows a good look.
As for Oprah… I wrote last week that this might feel like a throwback to when The Oprah Winfrey Show was still on the air and she’d have live performances, dancing and singing along in the front row. I can picture it already. Page Six reports that she introduces Adele ahead of the performance and their source says that Adele sang songs from 19 that “she’s never done live before” in addition to hits from… 21 and 25”. So I guess we’ll all be wrapped in our blankets with the tissue box close by on Sunday, November 14.
Adele told Vogue in her cover story that she’s “getting ready to be famous again” and ... well… yeah. That’s the thing about Adele – she’s not super thirsty for it, and will happily go away for years (literally), but when it’s time to be in the spotlight, she’s fully present in the spotlight. She’ll be in the spotlight now for a while. It won’t end when the album comes out. Adele season will extend well into 2022:
I want to go, I want to go, I want to go.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey