The more things change, the more they stay the same. Though the 2022 BRIT Awards marked the first time that the longstanding awards show would use no longer gendered categories, the Feb. 8 event still paid homage to one of Britain’s reigning musical monarchs: Adele. For the first time since 2016, Adele, 33, performed at BRITs, but before she could hit the stage at The O2 in London, she walked the carpet. The audience on hand shouted, almost drowning out the television presenters, as she posed like a literal star in the night sky.
when I tell you I just gasped!! @Adele has arrived 🚨 #BRITs pic.twitter.com/SnrwOl4LaQ
— BRIT Awards (@BRITs) February 8, 2022
Adele’s last performance at the BRITs was in 2016, when she sang “When We Were Young” to a packed house. That year, she took home the BRIT for British Album of the Year, British Single of the Year, British Female Solo Artist, and the Global Success Award. She almost had a clean sweep, but One Direction’s “Drag Me Down” nabbed the British Video of the Year over Adele’s “Hello.” She enters the 2022 ceremony with four nominations – British Album of the Year (30), Artist of the Year, Best British Song (“Easy On Me”), and Best Pop/R&B Act. If Adele sweeps the night – not an entirely unthinkable act – she will tie Robbie Williams for the artist with the most BRIT Awards at 13, per the BBC.
The 2022 Brit Awards marks Adele’s first major performance since postponing her Vegas residency. “I’m so sorry, but my show isn’t ready,” the singer announced in a tearful Instagram post on Jan. 20, one day before the show was supposed to start at the Colosseum of Las Vegas in the Caesars Palace Hotel. “Half my crew and team are [ill] with COVID and still are, and it’s been impossible to finish the show. I’m gutted — I’m sorry it’s so last minute, we’ve been awake for over 30 hours trying to figure it out and we’ve run out of time. I’m so upset and I’m really embarrassed and so sorry to everyone that traveled to get here. I’m really, really sorry.”
The Vegas residency is likely the only chance that fans in North America will hear Adele perform her new album. She shot down the idea of doing a marathon world tour, similar to the one that followed her last album, 25. “It’s too unpredictable, with all the rules and stuff,” she told Rolling Stone. “I don’t want anyone coming to my show scared. And I don’t want to get Covid, either.”
No one wants to remember this period of time,” she said earlier in the interview. “Obviously, it’s way better than last year, but the day my album comes out, someone’s loved one will have died from Covid. For them, it’s going to be a reminder every time they hear ‘Easy on Me’ on the radio.”