Wow. But Where Is Adele? The Perils of Pop Iconography
The Queen of Pop Soul resides for ten concerts in Munich; 750,000 people are expected to attend. The biggest show in the world! The premiere succeeds and yet leaves an emptiness.
Everything is running perfectly. The sky over the world’s largest concert stage darkens at 7:30 PM. A sea of waiting people grows restless. Is it going to start soon? This raincloud seems to relish charging up from the deep black of the arena. At 8:00 PM, there were eight minutes of downpour. Everyone who hasn’t wrapped themselves in cellophane is soaking wet. The sky clears up, and the wet and the dry are in high spirits. A huge jubilant community of fate. Clothes are wrung out, faces dried. And yes, then it starts. “Hello, it’s me.”
Adele Adkins, 36, is the British queen of pop soul and holds court in Munich. Residences—a series of performances at the same venue over multiple nights—spare artists from grueling travel schedules and save promoters on logistics costs from repeatedly constructing and dismantling stage equipment. Instead, fans shoulder the expenses in exchange for an appealing travel experience.
The Bavarian capital braces itself for rigorous security measures as anxious supporters grapple with ticket pricing fluctuations that have plummeted from exorbitant to surprisingly affordable. Meanwhile, the ambitious German-Austrian event organizers fret over potential complications, and the songstress herself grows apprehensive, not only because her floor-length midnight blue moiré taffeta gown becomes waterlogged during the opening number but also because of the awe-inspiring grandiosity of the entire spectacle.
This pop-up arena, custom-built to accommodate 75,000 admirers, boasts a sprawling 220-meter-wide and 30-meter-high video screen—the world’s largest—and a 200-meter catwalk extending into the audience. Adjacent lies an Adele-themed amusement park complete with entertainment and dining options, all situated on 100,000 square meters of freshly laid, permeable asphalt designed to prevent mud from dampening the festivities.
Hours before showtime, the first attendees are greeted by a Spice Girls tribute act in Adele World. Against the chiming of an opulent four-horse carriage laden with beer kegs, the Adele Ferris wheel rotates as harlequins stilt-walk through the throng. A brass band interjects with a celebratory toast as Dean Martin’s crooning emanates from the carousel’s loudspeakers. White hydrangeas bloom while an ivy-entwined red telephone booth imparts telecommunications history to the Instagram generation. Pub-inspired stalls allude to the vocalist’s sociocultural origins, and countless booths offer diverse festival fare and libations. An amiable community comprised of families, couples, and individuals of all ages—though predominantly elaborately made-up women between 20 and 35 clad in black dresses accessorized with affordable gold jewelry—enjoys the festivities.
It’s a sun-drenched affair filled with cheerful promenading, enthusiastic selfie-taking, sitting, lounging, eating, drinking, queuing, spending—particularly at the merchandise tent—and undoubtedly crafting an unforgettable European adventure for those who have journeyed from afar. And many have done just that. Munich anticipates a staggering half-billion euros in additional revenue from Adele fans this August alone. While economically advantageous for the hosts and organizers, this pop culture-induced mass tourism phenomenon known as “gig-tripping” undeniably wreaks ecological havoc.
That evening, mere moments after her welcoming tune, Adele struggles to contain her tears of emotion—a battle she will wage several more times throughout the two-hour performance. In an apparent effort to unburden herself, she often immediately shares the source of her current sentiment: the inconceivable scale of the event, reflections on her career’s humble beginnings and former insecurities, and the adoration and lyrical familiarity exhibited by the countless individuals present.
Since 2008, Adele has released four albums in which she deals with the love and suffering of her respective phases of life. Even those who are not fans will know her biggest hits. “Rolling In the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” “Set Fire to the Rain,” “When We Were Young,” “Easy On Me” or “Hello.” The typical Adele sound is a paradox of intimacy and grandeur. The closeness is created by simple piano chords and the presence of Adele’s strong, airy, brittle, flowing, hard and soft soul voice. The spatial depth of the songs is built from organs, strings, and choirs. Even in elaborate arrangements, one recognizes a simple elegance because she and her inwardness are always the vanishing point. No musical bells and whistles, hardly any up-tempo numbers, no sonic surprises, no technical innovations, acoustically conservative in values and, precisely for that reason, universally accessible.
Among her contemporaries—Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift, who have all recently graced German stages—Adele embodies the sole classic diva with a modern twist. On her latest album, 30, which was released in 2021, she deals with the failure of her first marriage. Regarding content, Adele goes to where it hurts, is lonely and often dark. As colleague Jens Balzer put it in this space, survival has become the leitmotif of her art. Her aura emanates from the opulent evening gowns, the voluminous hair, the bold makeup, the emotional depth, and the pop-historical resonance of her music. She evokes memories of luminaries like Dusty Springfield, Shirley Bassey, and Barbra Streisand while simultaneously forging her own distinctive path.
“They say to play hard, you work hard, find balance in the sacrifice,” Adele’s song “I Drink Wine” says. Those who make a career must make sacrifices. After a long conversation with her good friend James Corden, she wrote the lyrics. Both expatriate Brits in Los Angeles were famous and successful at the time, yet they were dissatisfied with their lives. Because they could watch themselves getting smaller and smaller in the higher, faster, further, Adele would not be the aforementioned modern diva if she did not meet such upheavals with controlled pragmatism.
Adele has discussed how she goes about it in detail with Oprah Winfrey; for example, she protects her private life and takes time out again and again for reflection, therapy and reorientation. Adele looks at her wounds, closes them and writes new songs about them. She explained that talking about one’s weaknesses takes courage during the Munich concert. She praises Olympic champion Simone Biles, who has put mental health on the agenda of top sports associations. What’s especially contemporary about Adele is that she is a miracle and wound, but she dissolves her commercial self-doubling, again and again, to recover from the physical and mental strains of the pop business. Many musicians and singers before her have perished from drugs and painkillers.
As Adele stands at the edge of the stage in Munich, appearing diminutive to the naked eye amidst the semicircle of tens of thousands yet larger than life and multiplied on the world’s most expansive video screen thanks to innumerable cameras, the primary weakness of this technically flawless production becomes apparent. The show’s immensity fails to capture the magic of Adele’s music or persona. As the night progresses, the chasm between intimacy and grandeur only widens.
Adele’s charisma lies in her disarming street humor and the ease with which she portrays herself as a relatable and likable everywoman. She curses about her stage fright, boasts about her drinking stamina, draws the community’s attention to a same-sex marriage proposal in the front row, invites an enchanting pair of siblings from Stuttgart onstage for a chat, and launches gifts into the crowd with a t-shirt cannon. She invests significant time and effort in attempting to fill the arena’s unfathomably vast interior, which seems to dissolve into the night sky, with her energy.
However, the question remains: how does one establish an intimate atmosphere with 75,000 people? Adele tries by pointing out that the screen, shaped like a gently splayed film reel, reminds her of an embrace. And indeed, everyone present likely feels quite comfortable at the moment. However, they don’t feel personally addressed but rather as part of a collective.
At the Munich exhibition grounds, Adele pays homage to her entire oeuvre, from her early days with “Chasing Pavements” to “Skyfall” and “Hold On.” It’s a colossal karaoke party, framed by such effective camera work that images of themselves repeatedly move the audience. The jovial afternoon collective has now found its evening role in a state-of-the-art music film production. Smartphones are raised in unison. It is fully immersive, entirely awe-inspiring, and so colossal. The absolute dominance of the media persona.
What the tracking camera fails to project on the screen shrinks to normal size, which in this arena equates to irrelevance. Somewhere, Adele stands and sings. She says something. Oh, are the members of a string orchestra dispersing along the catwalk? The musicians are barely visible and completely inaudible, as their sound apparently isn’t mixed into the half-playback. The audience’s drop in engagement is palpable when pre-prepared video clips are shown on the screen, with Adele singing live and lip-syncing somewhere on the world’s largest stage. A peculiar yet telling decision by the show’s directors. If there’s a reason beyond the karaoke party and the massive event that has drawn these people here, it’s to see and experience the diva’s authentic self. But that self is now only discernible as a projection.
Everything unfolds flawlessly, from the warm-up in the amusement park to the finale, replete with flame throwers, confetti showers, and fireworks. Adele in Munich has become the unprecedented mega-show it was intended to be. However, it only partially captures the essence of Adele, that magnificent paradox. The other half of her persona has already bid farewell, retreating into the next hiatus to ensure her survival.