Adele's George Michael Tribute Meant So Much More to Her Than You May Realize

Published on Feb 13, 2017 at 3:04 AM

There were a lot of memorable moments when it comes to Adele's Grammys night. After all, she won every award she was nominated for and spent a fair amount of the night gushing about Beyoncé. Perhaps her most memorable part of the night came when she paid tribute to George Michael. It was a moment that was so important to her that she stopped and restarted the song when she felt like the performance wasn't going as expected. Backstage in the press room, Adele was asked to comment on the moment, and it turns out this was more than just a tribute. The singer had been working hard on it, and George Michael was one of the most influential individuals in her young life. Read her quotes about him below.

On the tribute: "I've been working really hard on this tribute for a month. Every day. . . . They didn't want a tribute at first, his family and camp and stuff like that. And they came back and were very specific that it be me, and I was like, 'I've got something in the pipeline! If you want me to do it, I'll do it."
On his impact in her younger years: "My earliest memory of me being a lone fan out of my family was "Fastlove." It was when the video came out for that, and I was blown away by how f*cking HOT he was. It's actually quite exceptional how good looking he was. And I was young, you know, I was about 10. And I heard the vulnerability of that song. Especially in the middle eight, when it goes from being about one night stands and being a little bit sleazy to saying, 'in the absence of security, I made my way into the night,' and 'I lost my way' basically."
On why he's such an important figure in music: "I found him to be one of the truest icons, because a lot of the time with people that are globally known and famous, there tends to be — not a fakeness in a bad way — but they put on this massive bravado and this alter ego to protect themselves, and rightly so. And I completely understand and appreciate that. But for him, it didn't always seem to be solely based on a look or about an assumption."