Adele’s Attempt At Beyoncé’s “Everybody On Mute” Challenge “Failed Miserably”

When Beyoncé sings the line “everybody on mute” during “Energy,” her Renaissance World Tour audiences already know the drill and hold a moment of silence. Concertgoers in each city so far have independently declared themselves the “winners” of Queen Bey’s challenge, but Adele let her fans throw their hats in the ring at her Weekends With Adele residency in Las Vegas on Friday, Aug. 26. Spoiler alert: They didn’t understand the assignment.

“You f*cking failed miserably,” Adele joked in a fan-captured video after attendees at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace disobeyed her lyrical command. “I just said ... when she sings ‘everybody on mute,’ you have to be f*cking quiet.”

As the “Easy on Me” singer noted, they weren’t the only audience to not pass muster, though. Adele said that she’d just been watching videos of Beyoncé’s Atlanta tour stop earlier that morning, joking that those concertgoers also “failed miserably,” adding, “Everyone was like ‘wah!’” However, Adele likely confused Atlanta with another location because the “Break My Soul” singer herself actually declared the Georgia city an early challenge champ just days after previously bestowing the “EERBODY ON MUTE WAR WINNER” honor upon the Washington, D.C. crowd on Aug. 7.

For Adele, imitation is a form of flattery. For more than a decade, the British singer has long made no secret that she’s in the BeyHive and even famously shouted out her “monumental” Lemonade visual project as the more deserving winner during her Album of the Year acceptance speech at the 2017 Grammy Awards. Beyoncé, for her part, also shared the love in a Vanity Fair cover story, saying, “It is so easy to talk to her and be around her. She’s funny as hell, and her comebacks are legendary. The most beautiful thing about Adele is that she has her priorities straight. She is a gracious woman and the most humble human I’ve ever met.”

Queen Bey isn’t the only fellow artist to whom Adele gave flowers in Las Vegas, either. In another fan video on X (formerly Twitter) from the Aug. 26 show, she told the audience that she’s “obsessed” with Miley Cyrus’ new song, “Used to Be Young,” which dropped the same day. After proclaiming that she’s “always been a big Miley Cyrus fan” and has “such a soft spot” for the new track, Adele admitted that just thinking of the song’s meaning was making her “tear up” on the spot. “I absolutely love her,” she said of Cyrus, adding, “I think she’s such a legend.”

Apparently, the feeling is mutual. Reposting a video of Adele’s concert comment, Miley tagged the singer, writing, “I thought of you often while writing this song — always hoped that you would love it. This means the world to me. I love you. Mission accomplished.”