Adele concert review from someone who wasn’t there
First question people may ask me. Why wasn’t I at the Adele concert? The main reason that I boycotted her concert was that she wasn’t going to sing my personal favourite song of her’s, Turning Tables, as part of her concert setlist.
However despite having this protest of sorts it doesn’t mean I can’t give a review of it.
First off there was the curtain-raiser put on of a Warriors NRL game to fully utilise the Mt Smart Stadium pitch. This was thought to be an odd choice for many, however this would be the first game of rugby league that the largely white crowd had seen. The NRL was happy to put on the match on as the warm-up for the main event of Adele performing. They hoped this would help them expand the fanbase for the sport.
In theory this sounded good but the reality is that it was slightly impractical as there was big stage in the middle of the field that obstructed the play quite a bit. Also a large number of the crowd that were on the field waiting for Adele to start got injured with the players running into them for most of the game’s duration. Being the Warriors they lost as usual but to their credit it was only in the last minute of golden point extra time.
Going to golden point was annoying to some of the crowd because those extra 9 minutes meant that there was 300 more people injured than if the match ended at the end of regular time. The NRL really need to think about just returning to have draws at the end of 80 minutes in regular season play if the match is tied, especially considering the crowd injury count at this game.
Now to the concert itself. Adele came out onto the stage wearing the special Adele concert commemorative Warriors jersey that the Warriors had lost in a few minutes earlier but she is a winner so the crowd gave her a standing ovation, which is in complete contrast to what the Warriors get at the end of every home game at Mt Smart Stadium. Then she did the haka, not Ka Mate but Kapa O Pango. That’s simply incredible because even in my last 10 years I’ve seen that particular version of the haka I haven’t fully memorised it yet she did every movement to a tee because she is a true professional.
I won’t go into too much detail about the concert, therefore totally defeating the purpose of doing a review but the highlight of the entire Adele concert would be her covering the Seinfeld theme. She beat boxed it all, not just the beatbox bit but also the guitar bassline bit just using her voice. The concert itself fit in with the concept of Seinfeld as there was hardly a non-white person in the sitcom and also the same applied to the crowd at her concert so Adele was apt in performing this.
Adele is not like some other artists who stay in the zone of performing and are a bit disconnected with the crowd. She kindly takes many occasions during the concert to acknowledge the crowd by calling them a bunch of entitled pricks in typical Adele fashion and the crowd lapped it up.
She has earlier said she may not tour again for a while and her tradition is to call her albums after the age she is when she writes them so currently her albums are 19, 21 and 25. So her next tour may not be until she cheekily writes her next album in 4 decades and she’ll do a tour to promote her 4th album, 69.
So people exited the concert happy, which is the opposite of the mood of many of her songs. One of the last things the crowd when exiting the stadium and entering the surrounding streets was to buy the counterfeit versions of the Adele concert commemorative Warriors jersey from the vendors who waited a long time outside the concert. The jersey would be a lasting souvenir reminding them of the great time they had from this concert. The purchase meant they could wear it with in pride in front of friends and family who are still to see the show on Saturday and Sunday. But they can only do that if they have reached home within two days after attempting to use Auckland’s public transport system straight after the show.