Adele has played down a rumoured feud with Phil Collins after he called her a “slippery fish” for opting not to write a song with him for her new album.
The British singer has smashed records with her latest release, 25, and her comeback single, Hello, has topped the pop charts around the world, but the 27-year-old star had to scrap an entire album’s worth of material after she deemed it unsuitable before releasing the new project.
Her change of heart also prompted Adele to ditch a plan to collaborate with former Genesis frontman Collins, but she insists she still has nothing but respect for the 64-year-old rocker.
“I met up with him and he was so nice,” she told Rolling Stone. “He’s such a genius, but I met up with him in London super-early, like well before I was starting the record and I had this song in mind and I can’t remember if I gave him a copy of the song or if I gave him a chorus or something, and then I just chickened out of everything.
“I went, ‘Oh, I’m not ready’. And he called me a slippery fish! I think he interpreted it that I decided I didn’t want to work with him, but actually I decided I didn’t want to write a record, period, at that point… There’s no bad blood there, or certainly not on my half.”
Adele’s success has led to meetings with a string of famous rockers, including U2 frontman Bono and John Mayer, who developed a bond with the Rolling in the Deep singer when she was suffering from a vocal hemorrhage in 2011.
“John Mayer had vocal troubles about the same time as me, and he was an angel,” she said. “He reached out and really reassured me.”
The singer underwent surgery to fix her vocal issues, and while some singers would have been petrified a hemorrhage could mark the end of their career, Adele was never that worried.
“It just felt like someone had pulled the curtain or closed the door in my throat,” she explained. “And you could feel there was something in my throat stopping me from being able to talk or sing properly.
“My doctor was great, you know? He was like, ‘This is fine – you’ve got a very common singer’s injury’. He was like, ‘I’ve seen this a million times; I’ve fixed it a million times’, so I didn’t ever really feel frightened.”
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