THE HEART CONTINUES TO BLEED
Hold on to your tissues — Adele is back and her new album is jam-packed with tearjerkers
The return of Adele goes to show just how much the world had been gagging for her new album. And rightfully so, for it’s been four long years since we last basked in the brilliant glory of 21, her 2011 release which became nothing short of a global phenomenon. Apart from casually breaking a few records here and there, it also won Adele six Grammy Awards in 2012 and became the best-selling album of the past decade. After what must have been an excruciating wait for her fans around the world, the 27-year-old British crooner finally emerged from her domestic bliss, bearing the gift that is the rather unimaginatively-titled third record, 25. Surely, by now we’ve all been bombarded with the inescapable first single Hello, a heartfelt piano ballad that guarantees to inspire the less emotionally stable among us to promptly reach for their phones and text their exes. The accompanying video, as simple and unelaborate as it is, has to date racked up more than 480 million views since it appeared on YouTube last month, leaving Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus scratching their heads in stunned disbelief. Such is the peerless power of Adele.
But how does the rest of the album fare? Well, if you’re into big, bold and meticulously-crafted break-up ballads, you won’t be disappointed. There are plenty of those on 25, each with varying degrees of effusive sentimentality ( Remedy, Love in
the Dark, All I Ask) and youthful nostalgia ( When We Were Young, River Lea). As always, Adele has the pipes to match the massiveness of these songs with incredible ease.
After a seemingly endless barrage of piano-driven slow burners, an emotional respite arrives in the form of the refreshingly jaunty Send My Love (To Your New Lover), helmed by masters of chart-toppers Max Martin and Shellback. “Just the guitar pick,” Adele commands at the beginning, then the guitar flourishes into pure pop territory as she heartily sings: “Send my love to your new lover/Treat her better/We gotta let go of all of our ghosts/We both know we ain’t kids no more.”
The standout of the lot, though, is I Miss You, a collaboration with the highly prolific Paul Epworth. The song packs the most punch, with booming drums and macabre lyrics a la Florence + The Machine (“Bring the floor up to my knees/ Let me fall into your gravity/And kiss me back to life to see/ Your body standing over me”).
Despite being billed as a “make-up” record, 25 feels like the wound that fuelled her last album still hasn’t completely healed. Sure, there are moments of acceptance and resignation, but those are few and far between, and often get overshadowed by the prevailing melodrama. Adele’s still wallowing in the same old heartbreak which, after a while, becomes a bit tedious, not to mention emotionally taxing.