Here’s Why Adele Thinks No One Else Can Sing Her Songs Like Her

No one sounds quite like Adele — and she knows it. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Thursday (Dec. 7), the publication’s latest cover star was brutally honest about what she really thinks when other artists attempt to sing her hits.

“With my music, and for whoever listens to it, I think I’m not the best singer in the world at all, but no one else can sing my songs like me because they didn’t write them,” she said. “No one can sing my songs like me, period.”

“The lyrics are not their own,” she added, laughing. “And I don’t think anyone else should sing my songs.”

OK, the Queen of Soul might be the one exception. “Apart from Aretha Franklin,” Adele amended when asked about the late legend’s cover of “Rolling in the Deep.”

“No, I don’t mind it when they do, but I’m just saying, they’re never going to be able to emote it,” she continued. “Same way that I can’t sing other people’s songs. I didn’t write the lyrics, and I can’t sing as well as them. But it’s just like, I would choose this any day.”

The 16-time Grammy winner’s new interview comes on the same day as THR‘s annual Women in Entertainment event, for which she is this year’s Sherry Lansing Leadership Award honoree. Still in the thick of her Weekends with Adele Las Vegas residency, the 35-year-old star also opened up about which of her concert guests made her “s–t” herself (Lady Gaga), her love for SZA and Dua Lipa and her surprising dream job — a script reader at a Hollywood studio.

As for new music, Adele says she hasn’t “even thought about it.” The same pretty much goes for collaborations with other artists, with the “Easy On Me” singer revealing that she’s turned down “a lot” of duet requests. “Some of them are just an obvious no, that I would never do,” she shared. “Some people ask and I’m like, ‘In what world do you actually think I would say yes to that?’ And it doesn’t make any sense either. A couple that I’ve been like, ‘Oh, I want to do that,’ and the timing hasn’t worked out.”

“I’m not anti-it,” she added. “I’m not anti-it at all. I’m open to it. But also, if I do it, it has to be f–king great.”