Adele hasn’t been directly roped into the Vanderpump Rules drama dominating reality television conversations for the duration of the show’s most recent season, but she also refuses to be out of the loop. During a recent show in her Las Vegas residency, the singer took a moment’s break from singing to ask for a rundown on Tom Sandoval’s jobless behavior.
The confusion, posed to an audience member who was equally as unsure, had been weighing on Adele’s mind from a previous conversation. “The other day my friend was like, ‘No, they really do restaurants or something,’” she explained. “So is it related to the TV show, and what does the guy do that cheated?”
Adele was pretty close. Sandoval is technically a bar owner, bartender, or some combination of the two. He’s also the frontman of a band that only sings other people’s songs. In between his drink pouring and glorified karaoke performances, he found time to cheat on his longtime girlfriend (now ex) Ariana Madix with her best friend and fellow VPR castmate Raquel Leviss.
The scope of this story has been so wide-spanning that Adele isn’t even the first musician to be sucked into its orbit. Last month, during a chaotic season finale, Tom Schwartz attempted to downplay his role in the affair, declaring that he isn’t Sandoval’s “bitch boy” and providing Maren Morris with the perfect lyrics for a Vanderpump soundtrack cut.
“I’m just a dude trying to get by in life. I’ve got a lot on my mind — my health, my wealth, my family, there’s fucking man-eating Nile crocodiles in Florida now. I don’t fucking know,” he told his ex-wife Katie Maloney, who promptly responded: “You sound like a country song.” On TikTok, Morris whipped out her guitar and flipped his woe-is-me grievances into a song Sandoval’s band wouldn’t dare try to co-opt.
And Adele, it seems, finally has a grasp on all of this thanks to the overlap of her fanbase with the show. “He’s trash,” one fan told her, clarifying: “He tries to sing, but he’s no Adele.” The fan also mentioned how Sandoval essentially cosplays as a server while also failing at being an entertainer.
“Like most of L.A.,” Adele said, summing it all up pretty perfectly.