Adele didn’t go easy on an Australian TV reporter, who showed up to an interview without doing the requisite prep work.
The superstar British singer had agreed to recorded an interview with Matt Doran, a journalist with the free-to-air Channel 7, for what was to be an Australian exclusive.
Doran, who co-hosts the Weekend Sunrise program, made the trek from Sydney to London with two colleagues, part of a rights package that reportedly cost the broadcaster A$1 million ($720,000).
The interview with Adele was “going to be pretty special”, he gushed in a post to Instagram on Nov. 4.
The only problem is, Doran wasn’t across the subject matter. Specifically, Adele’s piping-hot new album, 30.
Doran was caught-out in the interview, during which he admitted to the singer that he hadn’t listened to the LP in full. It was an oversight that is said to have resulted in Sony Music burying the footage, never to see the light of day.
Speaking with the The Australian, Doran says he was “totally unaware” he’d received an email link to a preview copy of the album. “It was an oversight but not a deliberate snub,” he said. “This is the most important email I have ever missed.”
As fellow journalists piled on with their social accounts, Doran told local media he hasn’t been formally suspended from Sunrise, following reports that suggested he’d been sidelined for two weeks.
The canned interview shouldn’t hurt Adele’s profile here in Australia.
During her one and only tour of Australasia, a 2017 stadium trek in support of 25, Adele played to more than 600,000 fans across just eight shows.
That jaunt smashed a handful of venue records, including the fastest sell-out at Perth’s Domain Stadium, and her Adelaide Oval show boasted the largest attendance ever for a concert in the state of South Australia.
The lead track from 30, “Easy On Me,” blasted to No. 1 on the ARIA Singles Chart last month, for her third leader in Australia after “Someone Like You” (June 2011) and “Hello” (November 2015).
Expect 30 to dominate when the fresh ARIA Albums Chart is published Friday (Nov. 26).
