All I Ask

All I Ask

Adele

“All I Ask” is a song by British singer-songwriter Adele, written about a potentially final escapade in a failing relationship. It was written in collaboration with Bruno Mars, Brody Brown and Philip Lawrence for her third album, 25.

The song received a relatively large amount of promo for a non-single: it was first performed live as a part of Adele: Live in New York City, and next in the Carpool Karaoke segment on The Late Late Show with James Corden.

However, some fans of Adele began associating a ‘curse’ with this song after its next promo spot, the 58th Grammy Awards. During Adele’s “All I Ask” performance there (which itself was a surprise, she had been expected to perform her then-latest single, “When We Were Young”), the piano microphones fell from their mounts and onto the strings, creating a loud clanging noise perceivable to the audience and multiple times louder yet in Adele’s earpiece. She bravely sung on, later consoling herself with some cheeseburgers and a redo performance on Ellen.

Continuing the supposed curse, two months later, during a tour stop in Birmingham, UK, all of the arena’s speakers simultaneously stopped working during a performance of this same song. This time, Adele’s earpiece remained normal, though, so she didn’t realize the issue until afterward.

Coincidentally or not, Adele dropped “All I Ask” from her tour setlist on July 16, 2016, and has not performed it since.