Tonight… isn’t just for me. It’s for someone we’re all scared to lose. Someone whose voice shook the walls of this world, and whose soul, believe it or not, was soft as velvet beneath the metal. This is for Ozzy.”
Adele’s voice, raw and trembling, echoed through the summer air like a confession. Some fans gasped. Others raised trembling hands to their lips. The giant screens behind her, which moments ago had flashed dazzling golds and silvers, went dark. All that remained was the soft glow of stage lights, and Adele—small and impossibly human against the yawning black of Hyde Park’s night.
She stepped away from the mic stand. Her gown, a simple black silk that rippled like water when she moved, caught the moonlight. She turned to the band. One nod. The drummer lowered his sticks. The bassist cradled his instrument like a sleeping child. Only the pianist remained, a slight woman in a sequined blazer, fingers poised above the keys.
A hush fell. The 120,000 voices that had screamed every word of “Rolling in the Deep” minutes before now held their breath in unison. The wind rustled the ancient trees at the park’s edge. Somewhere in the crowd, a woman sobbed quietly, her partner wrapping an arm around her shoulder.
Adele closed her eyes.
The first chords of “Goodbye to Romance” drifted into the night—fragile, hesitant, like a memory waking up after a long sleep. Adele inhaled. She thought of him. The Madman. The Prince of Darkness. The fragile old man who’d once pressed his forehead to hers backstage at an awards show and whispered, “Never stop, love. Never let them change you.”
She remembered the way he’d laughed, great barking howls that cracked through the stale corridors of arenas. She remembered how his hands, so battered and tattooed, trembled when he held a teacup. She remembered the first time she heard him sing—her mum’s battered vinyl spinning under the needle, Ozzy’s voice rising like a ghost from the speakers. Even at fifteen, she’d understood that he was more than his madness. He was proof you could be chaos and kindness in the same breath.
She opened her mouth.
“Yesterday has been and gone…”
Her voice broke on the word “gone.” She pushed through. She made it gentle, her vibrato shimmering just above the piano. The big screens flickered back to life—no graphics now, just a slow montage of Ozzy through the years: the wild-eyed boy on the streets of Birmingham, the king of metal with a bat between his teeth, the father dancing clumsily in a cluttered kitchen with Sharon and the kids.
Somewhere near the front, a man lifted his phone. He couldn’t see the screen through the blur of tears. Beside him, a girl with bright pink hair mouthed every word along with Adele, her mascara streaked down to her jaw.
“Tomorrow will I find it gone?”
It was as if the whole park was holding its breath for him—for Ozzy, who sat hundreds of miles away in his quiet house, watching the broadcast on a giant TV that flickered between static and clarity. He sat in a leather armchair, wrapped in a blanket Sharon had draped over him. His eyes—those mischievous, watery eyes—shone as he watched Adele pour herself into his song. A nurse hovered in the hallway. Sharon sat cross-legged on the rug in front of him, holding his hand. She squeezed it when Adele’s voice cracked again.
He tried to say something, but the words tumbled out in a soft grunt. Sharon smiled up at him. “I know, love. She’s singing it for you.”
Back in Hyde Park, Adele reached the chorus. The crowd, so quiet before, now found its voice—not as a roar but as a murmur, a rising tide of people singing with her. They sang not to fill the silence but to carry it. The words rose into the night, past the bright rigging, past the trees, past the clouds glowing pink from London’s endless city lights.
Somewhere in the middle of the park, a father lifted his teenage son onto his shoulders. The boy, who wore a vintage Sabbath tee two sizes too big, held up a hand in the devil horns—awkwardly, shyly. Around them, strangers swayed together, linked by nothing but this moment and the sound of a voice that somehow made even heartbreak feel safe.
Adele stepped closer to the edge of the stage. She sang to them like she was singing to him, and maybe she was. She let her eyes find the sky, the big velvet stretch of it, and for a moment, she let herself believe that every note reached him—reached the man who taught the world that you could be broken and brilliant all at once.
When she reached the final lines, her voice fell to a whisper.
“Goodbye to romance…”
The piano drifted off, the last chord hanging like breath on cold air. Silence. For a moment, there was only the soft hiss of the wind and the distant hum of London’s heartbeat. And then, as if pulled by an invisible thread, the entire crowd raised their phones—little constellations of light blinking up at the stage, at Adele, at the memory of Ozzy.
Adele stood there, breathing hard. Tears streaked her cheeks. She pressed her hand to her chest.
“I know he’s watching,” she said, her voice thick but steady. “And I hope he knows we’ll never really say goodbye. Not to him. Not to that voice. Not to what he gave us.”
The crowd roared—not the roar of an encore but something wilder, older. A prayer, a thank you, a promise.
In his quiet house, Ozzy squeezed Sharon’s hand. His eyes fluttered closed. He didn’t need to say anything. She knew.
Back at Hyde Park, Adele stepped back to the mic stand, wiped her cheeks, and found her smile through the tears.
“Alright then,” she said, her voice cracking into a laugh. “Let’s wake him up, shall we?”
She turned to her band. The lights flared gold. The screens burst into color. The first stomping beat of “Rumour Has It” thundered across the park, but the echo of that fragile goodbye lingered in every heart. It would linger long after the lights dimmed, long after the crowd spilled into the London streets, humming that old, broken, beautiful song for the man who taught them how to rage and how to say good
bye—without ever really meaning it.
