Back in February, Adele performed at a friend's wedding and gave an update on her new album. She told guests to "expect my album in September".
In June, Adele's manager Jonathan Dickins confirmed to Music Week that the album wouldn't be arriving in September, "It isn’t coming in September, it’ll be ready when it’s ready. We’re all in the same boat, you’re doing stuff and then all of a sudden, the world stops. It’ll come when it’s ready. I can’t put a date on that yet. We have music, but we’re still working."
Over the weekend Adele shared a new post on Instagram praising a Glennon Doyle book. One fan wrote in the comments, "Adele where’s the album?" Adele responded, "I honestly have no idea."
Last year Adele was announced as a featuring artist on two tracks that turned out to be fake. The first was OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder, who joked that he had a song with Beyoncé, Adele, and Chris Martin. Soon after Nicki Minaj made a similar comment, where she claimed to have already shot a music video for an upcoming collaboration with Adele. The day after Minaj revealed she was being "sarcastic".