By Chrissy Iley
Adele you lost me at Hello. Like most people I was looking forward to seeing Adele at the Grammy’s. As of yesterday I thought Adele – what’s not to love? Well maybe her strange taste in event dresses. How she goes for the over embossed, the velvet, the embroidered. Anything that makes her look much larger than she actually is. But here’s the thing. As we all discovered on Sunday night, Adele really does think she’s large. Larger than the Grammy’s anyway. Larger than the Grammy’s audience of millions and millions. She seemed to think it was the Adele Show.
I was watching the show at a Grammy’s party. Lots of performers in the group – professional and otherwise. We were all shocked when a minute into the song Fast Love, a tribute to George Michael she stopped. Nobody had noticed her mess it up but she said, “I can’t mess this up for him.” Stirring emotion at the Grammy’s – audience there was filled with tearful George Michael fans. In our group the question was did she even know him? Were they even friends?
I thought, no, she can’t mess it up for her, It’s nothing to do with him but it was something I was forced to look up later.
What was the George and Adele association prior to that evening? Adele who has often referred to him as her hero – she has so many – dressed up as George Michael on her 27th birthday in May 2015. The tribute photo then prompted George to give her a shout out via Twitter saying ‘I’m so flattered. Love the Singing Greek.’
OK you once dressed up for him. Hardly counts as I can’t mess this up for him because most singers, no matter who they are have got where they are because they believe the show must go on. Not that it should stop for some ego driven fake emotion.
So why would you stop? Why would you take that time away from someone else who might want to say thank you very much for this Grammy and give a shout out to a few people they care about and why what just happened was important to them? Why indeed when you win album of the year and you snap the thing in half and give the rest of it to Beyonce because she “meant so much to my black friends.”
Poor Bey didn’t know where to look. And did Adele ever stop to think why would Beyonce want half of Adele’s Grammy? Where’s she going to put it? And surely she would want to forget forever this highly patronising moment where Adele informed her her black friends like her a lot. To me that’s far worse than Adele dropping a few F-bombs.
OK maybe she was overwhelmed and said the first thing that came into her mouth – that’s the sort of thing that sends women marching with Pussy Power banners across the world. So can we forgive in Adele what we deplore in Donald?
Next time you win a Grammy, perhaps you’ll think someone might not want half of your broken Grammy that isn’t even for them. But wait a minute. Next time? The doyennes of the music business who voted for Adele in all those categories will think twice about voting for someone who trashes their judgement and trashes the honour bestowed upon them. Sure she’s got a bunch of Grammys’. She made it very clear she doesn’t need another one.
The whole thing made me and everyone else in the room angry. Angry that she thinks she can stop a song a minute in and say it’s because of her great friendship with George Michael which is tantamount to one Tweet. No, it’s about her. She broke the Grammy in half. And with it the love that the music biz had for her. Although Half a Sixpence maybe better than half a penny, half a Grammy’s not better than half a sixpence. Half a Grammy has no currency except that of arrogance.