Adele’s latest album- 30, has been praised as her ‘best yet’ after it was released Friday morning November 19th, I‘ve had a while to listen to the album and it has become my go-to album for my morning routine and afternoon commute.
When Easy On Me, the first single from her latest album, was released, it had a wide positive reception. It did however receive comments and reviews which mentioned that Adele sounded the same and needed to renew her voice. This which the singer responded by saying:
‘Why would I shake up my sound? No one else is doing my sound, so why would I change it up?’
This album tells the story of love. The good and the bad, rediscovering yourself in the presence and absence of love.
However, my unsolicited opinion is that the album was amazing, probably not her best but a beautifully written album. The album which felt like a therapy session, took three listens for me to fully fall in love with the album as opposed to the other albums which had me enthralled from the first listen.
In my books, 30 doesn’t really compare to 19, 21 and 25 which were my major companions as a teenager handling feelings these albums helped me put my emotions into perspective.
However, it doesn’t because 30 is an adult Adele singing and communicating to her adult listeners.
From Turning Tables to Chasing Pavements, Rolling in the deep, Someone Like You, Rumour Has It, Just to mention a few.
These pasts songs have a melodic tune with lyrics and stories that helped to convey emotions, I expected them from 30. Did we get them yes? But it didn’t bring out those emotions strongly.
The album begins with Strangers by Nature: Here Adele mourns her past relationships alluding to the fact that the relationship cycle went from being strangers, to more than strangers, then strangers again.
The next song on the album is Easy on Me, easily my favourite on the album. This beautiful piano ballad where Adele asks for grace as she’s chosen a happier path for herself.
She then goes on to explain to her little love her 10-year-old son in My Little Love, this also contains conversations with her son. And a personal monologue at the end of the song.
Adele: I’m having a bad day, I’m having a very anxious day
I feel very paranoid, I feel very stressed
Um, I have a hangover, which never helps, but
I feel like today is the first day since I left him that I feel lonely
And I never feel lonely, I love being on my own
I always preferred being on my own than being with people
And I feel like maybe I’ve been, like, overcompensating
And being out and stuff like that to keep my mind off of him
And I feel like today, I’m home and I wanna be at home
I just wanna watch TV and curl up in a ball and
Be in my sweats and stuff like that, but I just feel really lonely
I feel a bit frightened that I might feel like this a lot.
She then gave us some fun bops in Oh My God and Can I Get It.
Next on the album is I Drink Wine, which she opened with “How can one be bound by choices that somebody else makes” I loved this line because I related to it a lot. Now younger me, this would have flown past my head but older I is like yes girl tell them.
She follows this with All Night Long.
Then Woman Like You Fan favourites. This is a diss track to someone, most likely another person and not her ex-husband as perceived since she has been in a few relationships after her divorce.
Hold On is sung to an adult Angelo as an explanation for why her marriage didn’t work. Consider it a kind of companion track to “My Little Love,” a zoom-out, flash-forward moment in the narrative.
I loved this song. When we all said to prepare your tissues for the Adle album Hold On was a perfect song to bring the tissues out.
Barely recovering from Hold On. Adele Gives us To Be Loved. The album’s longest track. This have been gaining the most attention, with fans in floods of tears at the raw emotion portrayed on the ballad.
But oh my, oh my
I’ll never learn if I never leap
I’ll always yearn if I never speak
To be loved and love at the highest count
Means to lose all the things I can’t live without
Let it be known that I will choose to lose
It’s a sacrifice but I can’t live a lie
Let it be known, let it be known that I tried
She closes with Love Is A Game. Haha, Love is definitely a game. The “30” album in itself is a blueprint of Adele’s failed relationship with Konecki, and the 12th track,” Love is a Game,” tells it all
As much as I loved the album it wasn’t like 19, 21 or 25 but I guess we grow and this album is a reflection of the woman Adele is now. However, 21 and 25 will still maintain special places in my heart.
