My journey to see Adele live in concert started last December. It was a bit of battle getting to the seats, but it was on life-changing night and well worth the fight.
This was how close I was to Adele! The eyes in the background stayed closed and then when she rose up form the stage the opened.
I had managed to get a pair of ticketless tickets to the show about a year before the actual event. The idea behind the ticketless tickets is that you use your credit card as your ticket to get in the event to prevent scalping. You can’t sell the tickets and you can’t transfer them to anyone else. Whoever purchases the tickets has to go to the event – you are required to show id with your credit card. It doesn’t sound terrible unless your credit card company cancels your card a month before the show because there was a hack and issues you a new card with a new number and instructs you to destroy the card you used to buy the tickets and you do it forgetting that it was your ticket to the concert because you bought the tickets a year ago.
That happened to me.
It’s a rather long story, but let’s just say it was lucky I had realized that had happened a month before the concert because it literally took the month to fight with Ticketmaster to get them to change the card number. Even when I went, I was only 90% sure it would work – I had gotten a cryptic email the night before from customer service that said I was all set except they referenced the wrong card information.
So, there I was, waiting in line to get my card swiped to enter the arena, basically on the verge of freaking out. The guy took my card, swiped it, and didn’t work. He did it again. Didn’t work. He swiped it a different way. No good. At this point, I was marshaling my energy not to have a melt down right there in front of a massive crowd. He then punched the number of my card into his little machine, and miraculously the tickets printed. He looked up at me, laughed, and said “don’t worry, you’re not the only one who was nervous it wouldn’t work.”
Honestly, they must rig the machines not to work when you swipe just to get you nervous. If you ever are considering buying ticketless tickets, take it from me and just…don’t.
Regardless of my troubles getting into the show, the night was absolutely spectacular. We got an email that said to arrive at 7:00 pm as Adele was going on promptly at 8:00 pm and there would be no opening act. This was an evening with just us and Adele.
Adele singing “Hello.”
I was so lucky with the seats. I didn’t get floor seats, but a few rows up from the floor so I was almost right there at the stage Adele rose up from. In most of the concerts I’ve gone to, I’m in the nose bleeds so the people on stage are like tiny little specks, but I legit could see Adele as though she was standing right in front of me (which, in a very real way, she was). As you could imagine, she rose up from the stage singing “Hello.” Which was a perfect opening…I mean, the anticipation of waiting a year to see her and the first thing we hear is “Hello, it’s me.”
About halfway through the song, she left the stage and walked through the crowd to the main stage up front to finish the song. She performed the majority of the show up there – including an acoustic set inspired by Alison Krauss – before returning back to the stage in the middle of arena to descend back down into the stage. Hearing Adele live is better than listening to her recordings, which is something hard to comprehend seeing how her records are so amazing already.
Adele on the main stage.
Right as the concert was about to start, the woman in front of me turned around and said “I have my tissues and my phone, I’m ready,” and that perfectly sums up the evening (the woman also alerted me that scrunchies are back in style, but I don’t know why…my hair is really short). When we weren’t crying from the emotion of the songs, there were tears of laughter in our eyes from Adele’s talks between songs. She so hilarious. She performed three songs in a row – “Hello,” “Hometown Glory,” and “One and Only” – before she introduced herself (as if she needed to). The first thing she said was “Have you come for a great time? Well I’m afraid to say you have come to the wrong place. It’s going to be pretty miserable. The songs, they’re pretty sad. I’m hoping you know who I am. If you don’t know who I am, then you’re going to have a really shit night. Because for the next two hours I’m going to sing sad love songs about me and my ex-boyfriends.” Not only did these talks make us laugh, but it made us realize how real Adele is. She interacted with members of the audience – something very few artists do. She asked people if they got tickets for Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., and she found an audience member who was there on their birthday (it was the woman’s forty-third birthday – when Adele heard that she said “shut up, you’re forty-three?! You look like you’re twenty-seven!”). She then promptly sang “Happy Birthday” to her and made us join in. Imagine being sung “Happy Birthday” by Adele. There was also a point when she finished singing a song and noticed a fan trying to take a selfie, so she bent down to be in their shot. Apparently the person didn’t notice because she said “Hun, if you turn around, you could take a selfie with me, I don’t normally stand like this.” So then of course everyone else want to take a selfie, so she did for different people around the stage, at one point saying “I must love you guys because my legs are killing me.”
My evening with Adele was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen and best nights of my life. She is so incredibly talented and it’s an immense privilege to experience her music first hand.
