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Adele · S8 E3
Munich
Two nights in a custom-built 80,000-seat open-air venue in Munich, Germany. A pop-up stadium for a pop-up moment.
August 31, 2024, Munich. Adele stands before 80,000 people at a custom-built outdoor arena, finishes her final song, and tells the crowd she needs to disappear for an incredibly long time.
Adele, "I Drink Wine" (official music video, 2022). Directed by Joe Talbot, the video opens with Adele floating down a lazy river in a ball gown, surrounded by other people drifting in various states of emotional wreckage. It's playful, surreal, and surprisingly funny. The perfect visual metaphor: everyone's in the same water, nobody's in control, and that's fine.
I Drink Wine
At over six minutes, this is the longest song Adele has ever released. Co-written with Dean Josiah Cover, the track builds through three distinct movements: a gentle piano verse, a gospel-tinged chorus, and a sprawling outro that just keeps expanding. The arrangement swells around her without ever competing. It's a song about surrendering the fight against things you can't change, and the length is the point: for the first time, Adele lets the music breathe instead of wringing every emotion into three minutes.
The Long Goodbye
Weekends with Adele runs for over two years, from November 2022 through November 2024. In the summer of 2024, she performs ten open-air concerts in Munich at a custom-built 80,000-capacity venue, her first European shows since the 25 tour. The Munich run was supposed to be a one-off. The demand for tickets crashed every system that tried to sell them.
TAP TO REVEAL: What is the one thing Adele has never done in her entire career that virtually every other modern pop star does constantly?
“"I just need a rest. I have spent the last seven years building a new life for myself, and I want to live it now."”
What connects Adele's four album titles: 19, 21, 25, and 30?
Love Is a Game
From 30 (2021). The closing track. Over a lush, orchestral arrangement that recalls classic Motown, Adele sings about being willing to risk heartbreak all over again. After four albums built on loss, regret, and recovery, this is the final word: love is a game, and she's still playing. It's the most hopeful song she has ever written, and the only possible way to end this story.
Love Is a Game, Adele (2021)
Read the lyrics while you listen. The closing track of 30, and the emotional endpoint of four albums. After all the heartbreak, all the silence, all the records broken, Adele decides she'd do it all again. The final chorus is where sixteen years of music comes full circle.
The Full Picture
From a council flat in Tottenham to the Colosseum in Las Vegas, from a MySpace demo to Munich's biggest stage, the girl who used to sing into a hairbrush became the voice of a generation. She says she'll be back. And if sixteen years have proved anything, it's that when Adele is ready, the whole world stops to listen.
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