“I’ve heard some tracks on it,” Alan Carr said about Adele’s highly-anticipated follow-up to 2015’s smash hit, 25. His diagnosis? “Oh my gosh. It’s so amazing. It’s so amazing,” said Carr, 44, during a conversation for Grazia UK with RuPaul’s Drag Race judge Michelle Visage on Wednesday (Jan. 13.) “I said to her, I said, ‘That voice is like an old friend.’ It’s like an old friend. Because there are some people [on] the charts who sound a bit like Adele and you go, ‘Oh they sound [like] Adele,’ and then when you hear Adele’s voice again you go, ‘Oh no, there’s only one. There’s only one Adele.’”
Michele asked Alan if Adele’s voice has “gone skinny,” referencing Adele’s incredible weight loss. Despite the 32-year-old “Hello” singer’s transformation, Alan says her voice remains the same. “No, she still got a ‘chunky-but-funky’ voice. Don’t worry.” As to when someone other than Alan will get a chance to hear these songs, that remains a mystery. In February 2020, Adele – while at her friend’s wedding reception, said that fans could “expect my album in September,” but COVID-19 seemingly derailed that plan.
When Adele posted a throwback photo of her performing in June, a fan asked, “Teaser? Albums coming out today???!!! Tell me now!!!!” Adele did just that. “Of course it’s not,” she said of her unreleased music. “Corona ain’t over. I’m quarantining. Wear a mask and be patient.” Adele went into further detail while hosting an October 2020 episode of Saturday Night Live. “Now I know there’s been a lot of chatter about me just being the host. I’ve seen all of it. Like, ‘Why isn’t she the musical guest?’ and stuff like that, and there’s a couple of reasons,” she explained during her monologue. “My album’s not finished, and I’m also too scared to do both. I’d rather just put on some wigs, and this [hair] is all mine, by the way, have a glass of wine or six and just see what happens. Who knows?”
Matt Chamberlain, the former drummer for Pearl Jam, knows – at least, he knows what some of Adele’s album sounds like. “I just got to work on some new music for Adele,” he said during a December 2020 episode of The Eddie Trunk Podcast on SiriusXM. “It was just so powerful and emotive. … You know her voice, but to be across the room from somebody doing that, it’s just insane. You hear it on the radio and whatever, and you go, ‘Yeah, it’s really good,’ but to be in the room with these people and feel that energy, it’s just so heavy.”