Adele gave fans an update on her health this weekend, after she appeared to be moving at a slower-than-usual pace during one of her Las Vegas performances.
By all accounts, the 15-time Grammy winner was in good spirits as she took the stage on New Year’s Eve Saturday as part of her “Weekends with Adele” residency. In a short video obtained by the Daily Star, however, she acknowledged having a slight mobility issue as she distributed T-shirts to lucky concertgoers.
“I’ve got two more. I’ve just got to get over to the other side of the stage,” she said, as seen in the clip. “I have to waddle these days, as I have really bad sciatica.”
As Johns Hopkins Medicine explains, sciatica is “pain that originates along the sciatic nerve,” which extends from the back of the pelvis down the back of the thigh. Symptoms include a constant burning sensation and/or shooting pain that originates in the lower back.
It isn’t the first time that Adele has alluded to having back issues.
“I’ve been in pain with my back for, like, half of my life, really,” she told The Face in 2021. “It flares up, normally due to stress or from a stupid bit of posture. But where I got my tummy strong, down at the bottom, which I never had before, my back don’t play up as much. It means I can do more, I can run around with my kid a little bit more.”
Elsewhere in that interview, Adele said: “I slipped my first disc when I was 15 from sneezing. I was in bed and I sneezed and my fifth one flew out. In January, I slipped my sixth one, my L6. And then where I had a C-section, my core was useless.”
Health concerns aside, Adele has received near-universal praise from critics and fans for “Weekends with Adele,” which opened in November after a last-minute postponement that ended up lasting about 10 months. Billboard called the show “utterly and breathlessly spectacular,” while the Los Angeles Times praised the pop diva for striking “an exquisite balance of personal storytelling and Las Vegas glitz” with her performance.