There are a lot of one-liners you can say about an amazing concert. “It was such a small venue I could see the flyaways in her hair.” “She sounded just as good as the record.” “Every song moved me, even the covers.” But these platitudes wouldn’t actually capture a night with Adele, the 23-year-old pop sensation from Britain. Adele is the rare performer who prefers playing in smaller venues with smaller revenues, who gets so scared of performing in public she practically throws up before every performance, and who doesn’t need spectacle to prove that she’s not going to fit a predetermined mold (Take note, Gaga.). There has perhaps not been a performer like her since Kate Smith or Johnny Cash. (Her opener, the 74-year-old Wanda Jackson,
hints at but does not capture this heritage.)
But don’t get me wrong: Adele is not flawless. She trusts the audience too much. (When she lets them sing the chorus to “Someone like you,” they forget a critical turn in the lyrics, still adding in “two” on the instance it’s not called for.). She doesn’t actually sound like her record. (Her voice doesn’t crack a single time in
person, and she no longer tries for the highest notes, both likely (and wisely) on the advice of her physician after suffering from a laryngitis that almost permanently destroyed her voice.) She is still pretending to be surprised at the size of the audience in front of her. (Really, after four years in the spotlight, can we really
believe “all this support is a surprise“? Tickets at face value of $35 were going for ten times that online for weeks.) But flawless is not what you ask for in a performer—perfection is. And Adele is, indeed, perfect in her performance. When she turns to her pianist and says “We have to start over, I f*cked up the chorus,” you realize this is a woman who really cares about her music, but who also doesn’t take herself too seriously; a woman who wrote songs that ripped her own heart out before they took yours; and above all else, a performer who realizes perfect doesn’t mean flawless.
Check out the official “Someone Like You,” and download the Jonathan Gering remix, below.
MP3: Someone Like You (Jonathan Gering Remix) by Adele
