The 12 second video from BlendTV, which shows Adele hanging up on musical legend Lionel Richie (in a cut from his 1983 hit of the same title as her smash single), has over six million views to date. But it wasn’t until a recent real estate event at Art Basel that Richie revealed a real-life collaboration might be in the works.
“Wasn’t that hilarious? Hilarious!” Lionel said in an interview with E! News, before moving on to talk more specifically about working with the British singer. While a definite possibility, from the sound of it, a collaboration is on the back burner for a while.
“We are going to be doing something together — that’s already almost in the works … I can almost say that we are talking,” Richie said, “But right now she has a mission. Her mission is [to] get her record out and go on tour, so until she finishes that cycle, that won’t happen just yet. She is committed to that.”
Richie might have to wait a while for the album cycle to be over. Adele currently dominates the album charts, having sold more than 4 million copies of her new release 25 in less than two weeks — the highest-selling debut of a new album since Billboard began the charts in the early 1990s. And her previous record, 21, has been riding high for the past four years, making the top-10 charts over 87 times on and off during the time.
When asked about maybe jumping on stage during her next tour, a-la the frequent celebrities who joined Taylor Swift on stage over the course of this year, Richie sounded skeptical.
“If I jump on her stage, [they’d] probably throw me out,” he said, “No, no, that won’t happen on this tour! Can you imagine ‘Lionel Richie Jumps or Crawls Up on Adele’s Stage?’”
But despite what he thinks, it’s tough to imagine Adele fans — or any fans for that matter — hating the idea.
