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For over a decade, Adele has provided the soundtrack to her audience’s lives while they grapple with the feelings at the start and end of relationships. She’s my No. 1 draft pick for a “down bad” playlist.

Her 2015 hit “All I Ask” grapples with the pain of seeing a lover for the last time, while 2011 chart-topper “Someone Like You” is about replacing a partner, with the timeless line, “sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead.”

But Adele hasn’t had a project solely about the emotional trauma surrounding a single breakup — let alone a divorce, which she went through in 2019 — until now.

Adele’s latest project, “30,” which she told Zane Lowe was her most personal yet, makes listeners sympathize with the artist’s breakup while reflecting on their own pain from past breakups. The themes and lyricism are similar to what she’s done in the past, but she complements them using her experiences with motherhood. The songs themselves are longer than anything she’s done in the past, leading to a significant sonic difference after her six-year hiatus.

This change comes with a variety in production at times, straying away from the usual orchestral or piano-heavy beats. After using voice recordings on “My Little Love,” Adele pitches her voice up on “Cry Your Heart Out,” the first upbeat pop song on the album.

The next two tracks, “Oh My God” and “Can I Get It,” create a similarly buoyant vibe as Adele sings about the nervousness of returning back to a post-divorce reality. These are some of the first songs in Adele’s discography that make the audience want to get up and dance, despite the emotional undertones in the lyrics.

Even the songs that sound similar to her previous work become more cinematic through the use of producer Ludwig Göransson — who worked on the “Black Panther” score and “Awaken, My Love!” by Childish Gambino — on the album’s opening track, “Strangers By Nature.” The interlude track, “All Night Parking,” uses a sample from jazz pianist Erroll Garner, but the addition of a constant drumbeat makes this song sound like lo-fi R&B.

Despite the shift in production, Adele is still Adele, lyrically. She maintains her trademark songwriting that combines universal thoughts with her own personal experiences in a simple and elegant way. She ends the album on the high note of “Love Is A Game,” which delves even deeper into the meaning of love.

Best track: “My Little Love”

In her interview with Lowe, Adele said that she was inspired by Skepta and Tyler, the Creator’s and latest projects to add voice recordings to her songs. Having her son’s voice on the song makes it feel more similar to Frank Ocean’s “Futura Free,” where Ocean used the sound of his brother in the middle of the song. The recordings themselves were a suggestion from her therapist to cope with the anxiety that she had talking with her son about the breakup.

Adele is unapologetic about these feelings, marrying these vignettes of conversations with her son over harmonies and a simple orchestra. The song itself is dedicated to him, opening with the lines, “I see your eyes widen like an ocean / When you look at me so full of my emotions.”

However, Adele reveals the real meaning of the song immediately after — that she feels as if she’s failed as a mother. Adele says, “I’m findin’ it hard to be here, sincerely / I know you feel lost, it’s my fault completely.” In her last verse, Adele sings, “When you lay on me, can you hear the way my heart breaks?” This precedes the final voice recording on the track, not with her son, but a voicemail she said she left for her friend amidst a full anxiety attack.

This song is absolutely sad, but Adele leaves a simple message in its 6-and-a-half minutes: being anxious is okay. This song transitions into three tracks where Adele embarks on her journey of getting over her breakup, no longer scrutinizing herself as a mother.

One Skip: Nothing

For the first time in any of my record reviews, there are no skips. Like Michael Jordan in the NBA finals, “30” is perfect.

The audience’s attention is never lost throughout the 12-song album. Each note and lyric seamlessly transitions into the next, leaving the audience curious about how Adele is going to sound next or what other part of her psyche she’s going to reveal. While the album is less than an hour, it may feel like a day-long experience.

Hardest Bars: “Easy on Me”

Referring to any Adele song as having the “hardest bars” seems arbitrary, because every track is straight bars. Like picking a skip, choosing one verse or lyric from this album is an almost impossible task.

But you always remember the first. “Easy On Me” was the single Adele used to promote “30,” and it’s the most popular, with roughly 400 million streams on Spotify. “Easy On Me” was the introduction to the new, post-breakup Adele, and this song directly references her divorce.

The opening verse is one of the best Adele has ever written, starting with the lines, “There ain’t no gold in this river / That I’ve been washin’ my hands in forever.” She continues, “I know there is hope in these waters / But I can’t bring myself to swim / When I am drowning in this silence.”

Adele uses a river to create a metaphor for her relationship, losing the gold nuggets that used to flow through it. She has hope to save her marriage, but the task itself is too hard to handle. She’s left in silence with her partner, unable to wring anything else from the love they once had.

Final thoughts:

Every artist’s goal is to improve with each project. But for Adele, that expectation was a tall order. Her last project, “25,” not only won all five Grammys it was nominated for, but it also became the fastest-selling album of the 21st century.

“30” is a step up from “25.” This is the most complete album Adele has released — every song adds to the broader themes about breakups, motherhood and life post-breakup. The nuanced production also makes the album captivating in a fresh way, differentiating “30” from the Adele audiences met with “19.”

Adele has moved away from being known for her ballads and depressing lyrics. She’s entered the pantheon of great artists with this album, displaying a versatility that is difficult to execute.

Adele’s back. Now the only question is: what’s next?

Published on December 6, 2021 at 11:37 pm