Adele Says That George Michael’s Family Would Only Allow Her To Perform His Grammy Tribute

During Adele’s tribute to George Michael at the Grammys, she stopped after the first verse of her slowed-down version of Fastlove, and said she had to do it right for him before staring over. Adele was taking that tribute performance very seriously. As it turns out, she was taking it seriously because the family of George Michael specifically wanted her to perform the tribute.

Adele, who is a huge George Michael fan, recently spoke to The Mirror UK’s Sunday People about her performance and said that after he died on Christmas Day she went for a walk by herself. The next day she told her partner Simon Konecki that she wanted to do a tribute to George Michael at some point.

According to Billboard, the original idea for a George Michael tribute at the Grammys was really different. George’s manager Michael Lippman wanted the tribute to be a mash-up of his songs sung by Adele, James Corden, Rihanna, and Beyonce. Grammy executive producer Ken Ehrlich was down for that. James Corden sort of makes sense, because the very first Carpool Karaoke segment he did was with George Michael back in 2011.

George Michael’s family didn’t want a tribute at first, but Adele says that when they found out it would be performed by her, they were into the idea. The only catch was that they specifically wanted it to be performed by just Adele. Adele also wanted it to be just her. Ken Ehrlich claims that Adele “had a vision for what she wanted to do with it.” And that’s how Adele’s tribute came to be.

It’s not known if Rihanna or Beyonce were actually asked if they wanted to do it. But maybe that’s why Rihanna was taking so many shots from her flask all night. She was pissed that she never got to wear her tribute to George Michael in the Faith video, aka a denim thong and a leather jacket with the tits cut out around a pair of pearl-covered pasties.

Pic: CBS