In 2016, celebrations worldwide marked the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II, but for many of us outside the UK, there's only one true British queen, and her name is Adele.
Oh, Adele. She's just like the rest of us, messing up her life after two shots of tequila.
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At only 19 years of age, she burst onto the scene singing her full-throated lamentation "Chasing Pavements," a song about a relationship headed in uncertain directions.
That first album, 19, was critically acclaimed worldwide, but its effect on pop culture stateside was limited to the 8 a.m. music-video hour on VH1. The world really got to know Adele when she broke through with 21, a classic breakup album for the ages and the soundtrack to many people's nights in, drinking wine alone on the couch and sobbing to "Someone Like You."
One thing we learned while Adele toured 21 was that although her music got us through our most vulnerable and sensitive moments, she is also a tough, foulmouthed British chick with a no-fucks-given attitude toward those who hurt her, be they ex-boyfriends or critics. She often took these quarrels to the stage, sharing filthy anecdotes between tearful ballads.
Tuesday and Wednesday, October 25 and 26, her highness will grace the American Airlines Arena, regaling lucky ticketholders with songs from 19, 21, and her latest, 25. She'll also surely bring plenty of stories to the stage that will remind you there's little difference between her brash British way of expressing herself and a Miamian's tendency to keep it 100. Here are five times Adele was, like, super-Miami, bro.
When she flipped off the Brit Awards.
At the 2012 Brit Awards, the British equivalent of the Grammys, Adele took home the top prize for Best Album, but just as she was about to thank her fans for the honor, eventual talk-show host James Corden rushed onstage to cut her speech short in order to make time for a closing performance by Blur. "You're gonna cut me off," she said incredulously, as Corden stuttered through an explanation. "Can I just say then, 'Goodbye, and I'll see you next time 'round,'?" as she flung her middle finger at the cameras, a gesture she later clarified was for the suits, not the fans.
When she told Tony Visconti to "suck [her] dick."
This past summer, legendary David Bowie producer Tony Visconti told the Daily Star: "You turn on the radio and it's fluff. You are listening to 90 percent computerized voices. We know Adele has a great voice, but it's even questionable if that is actually her voice or how much has been manipulated." Though Visconti was making a general point about the music industry, Adele didn't take too kindly to being questioned about her vocal chops and shortly thereafter told an audience in Paris: "Some dickhead tried to say that my voice was not me on record. Dude, suck my dick." Short, sweet, and to the point. Visconti later apologized.
When she was like, Seriously, bro? to an obnoxious fan.
Even the best of us can't resist snapping a little 30-second video of a concert, but an Adele fan recently took it ten steps too far by setting up a damn tripod in the middle of a show. "I want to tell that lady as well, can you stop filming me with a video camera? Because I'm really here in real life. Can you take your tripod down? This isn't a DVD; this is a real show, and I would really like you to enjoy my show because there's lots of people outside that couldn't come in." I'm sure the people seated behind the tripod appreciated that comment.
When her team almost took her phone away for drunk-tweeting.
We all have that one friend who needs her phone snatched away so she won't text exes and tweet when she drinks too much wine. Adele is that friend. "When Twitter first came out, I was, like, drunk-tweeting and nearly put my foot in it quite a few times," she admitted during a BBC One concert. Last year, she told British TV host Graham Norton that two people from her management team must approve and sign off on her tweets before they go out. Oh, Adele. She's just like the rest of us, messing up her life after two shots of tequila.
When, like a secret agent, she exposed the fakes in her life.
At a certain age, we've all had frenemies, but a person in the public eye like Adele encounters more than her fair share. So she adopted a system to discern the fake friends from the loyal ones. "I plant stories and see who leaks them, and I get rid of them," she told 60 Minutes in 2012. "I tell a bunch of people who I'm suspicious of. I tell them all a different story with different details in it." If a story leaks, she knows the source of the leak. Savage.
Adele
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 25, and Wednesday, October 26, at the American Airlines Arena, 601 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 786-777-1000; aaarena.com. Tickets cost $36.95 to $146.50 plus fees via ticketmaster.com.
