Macklemore and Ryan Lewis managed to get Ed Sheeran, Chance The Rapper and Melle Mel on their new album This Unruly Mess I’ve Made but there was one person they couldn’t convince to join.
In an interview with the The New York Times, Macklemore revealed that he asked Adele to appear on the album but “she graciously passed.”
She was meant to be on Growing Up, the first track to be revealed from the album. It now features Ed Sheeran in her place. Read our review of that song and the rest of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, here.
It’s an ambitious move to try and get Adele on an album. She’s one of the highest selling artists of all time and spent most of the time in between 2011’s 21 and 2015’s 25, completely M.I.A.
In her entire career she’s only featured on two tracks too. She sang on The Raconteurs Many Shades Of Black in 2008 and duetted with Australian Daniel Merriweather on Water And A Flame in 2009. It was rumoured that she turned down a collaboration with Beyoncé once but she shut down those last year telling Zayn Lowe on Beats 1 Radio, “I’d never disrespect her like that.”
In an interview with Music Feeds, Macklemore said that when it comes to choosing collaborators they don’t think about the status of the person.
“For us, it’s about the music first and foremost: What type of sound do the people we’re collaborating with bring to the song,” he said.
“That’s what’s important. It doesn’t matter about the kind of name that they have or the kind of audience that they bring to the song.”
Listen: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – Growing Up (Feat. Ed Sheeran)
