Adele Forced To Cancel Shows Due To Lingering Health Concerns

British pop star Adele has built a monumental career off her effortless, larger-than-life, and seemingly unstoppable voice. But as she has discovered over her many years of recording and performing, not even powerhouse vocalists like herself are immune to the wear and tear that constant recording and performing has on one's body. Unfortunately, Adele's latest health struggles have started worrying fans and forced her to cancel a long string of performances in her Las Vegas residency.

The "Someone Like You" singer announced the cancellations on Instagram, writing, "I have to take a beat and pause my Vegas residency. I was sick at the end of the last leg and all the way through my break. I hadn't quite gotten the chance to get back to full health before shows resumed, and now I'm sick again, and unfortunately, it's all taken a toll on my voice."

She wrote that she had received orders from her doctor to start resting her voice and body immediately, which means that the last five weekends of Adele's Las Vegas residency in March 2024 have been postponed to a later date.

Despite the power behind Adele's voice, the vocal folds — the mechanism that produces the singer's signature sound, also called the vocal cords or voice box — are made of extremely delicate membranes that can swell, callous, and hemorrhage if overextended. Such was the case for the rising pop star in 2011 when a small growth called a polyp ruptured on Adele's vocal cord in the middle of a French radio performance. The injury immediately affected Adele's ability to use her voice, prompting the singer to undergo laser surgery to repair the vocal fold. 

Adele had been struggling to preserve her voice before the polyp hemorrhage, with several of the singer's tour dates being canceled years prior due to a chronic bout of laryngitis, which is an inflammation of the larynx that causes a hoarse, thin voice. "Singing is literally my life," the singer said in a statement released by MTV. "I have great confidence in believing you know how much this upsets me, how seriously I take it."

And indeed, Adele did take the rehabilitation of her damaged voice seriously. She underwent vocal rehab to retrain her voice to its full potential and continued recording, performing, and touring into the late aughts. Adele even installed a $500k air humidification and purification system onstage for her Las Vegas residency to help protect the singer's voice from dehydration and exhaustion.

There are obvious downsides that come along with canceling five weeks' worth of shows — financial losses, disappointed fans, and career setbacks. But for Adele and any other singer who has suffered a serious vocal injury, having your passion and instrument taken away from you against your will is incredibly devastating. Given Adele's long history of recurring health issues and her love for her Las Vegas residency, we don't doubt that these cancellations have had a tremendous impact on the singer's mental health, too. 

"This residency, these shows have changed my life," Adele wrote in a touching October 2023 Instagram post. "I desperately needed to fall back in love with performing live again, and I have. I needed to reconnect with my songs and remember what they mean to me, and I have! Being on stage over the last year so up close and personal with an audience again after all these years has been a truly extraordinary, restorative experience that I'll never forget."

Adele's cancellation announcement affects every weekend in March 2024. She wrote in her February 2024 Instagram post that her team is currently working out the details for those who have already purchased tickets to her Las Vegas performance and will share this information as soon as possible. For Adele's and her fans' sake, we hope that the singer makes a speedy recovery and returns to doing what she loves soon.