This is no rumor. Adele's next single, her fourth off the Grammy winning "21" album, will be the stompingly catchy "Rumour Has It," Billboard has confirmed.
Adele collaborator Ryan Tedder, who co-wrote the song with Adele and produced it, revealed the news on the Grammy red carpet on Sunday (Feb. 12). "I found out three days ago that I have the next single," Tedder told Billboard. "I'm very excited about it."
"Rumour Has It" is heading to pop, adult pop and adult contemporary radio in mid-March, a Columbia Records executive confirmed on Monday. The song was going to be the follow-up to "Someone Like You," but the label switched to "Set Fire to the Rain," which topped the Hot 100 in recent weeks and currently sits at No. 2.
The track already has a history on the singles chart. "Rumour" reached No. 60 on the Hot 100 in December, fueled largely by the "Glee" cast's exposure of the song. The same week, the TV troupe bowed at No. 11 with its mash-up of the song and Adele's "Someone Like You."
(Another "21" track, "Turning Tables," peaked at No. 63 on the Hot 100 -- another by product of a "Glee" cover.)
Previously, "Rumour" had been serviced only to adult alternative radio and it reached No. 1 on Billboard's Triple A chart in August. The song will follow "Rolling in the Deep," "Someone Like You" and "Set Fire to the Rain" as multi-format singles.
Tedder told Billboard he's excited that Adele and her once-in-a-generation voice have "cut through" to achieve mainstream success.
"I'm just excited that somebody as raw and real as that has cut through at radio and cut through at culture," he told us. "I've never seen anything like it, I feel honored to be involved with it."
Reporting by Keith Caulfield ( @keith_caulfield) in Los Angeles and Gary Trust in New York City.
I hope this gets a video (The Royal Albert Hall video was SFTTR's video, I think). I'm not expecting RITD/SLY/SFTTR type success, but I'm hoping it pushes the album closer to diamond status.
