“So I hope I learn to get over myself / And stop tryin’ to be somebody else,” she adds. Soaking it all up for fun, but now I only soak up wine When I was a child, every single thing could blow my mind The Song Called “I Drink Wine”), finds a resigned and appealingly exhausted volatility all her own, grappling with a hedonism that doesn’t feel all that hedonistic: But Adele, on the laid-back piano lope “I Drink Wine” (a.k.a. In a perfect world Adele and Amy would’ve been friendly but fierce lifelong rivals-on the charts, on the Grammy stage, and in quote-unquote the streets-and in that world, too, listeners who prized grittiness, and volatility, and a little quote-unquote danger would’ve always gravitated to Amy. The Forlornly Swaggering Song) and the string-drenched older-soul grandiosity of closer “Love Is a Game” (a.k.a. The pronounced jazziness, in tandem with the messiness, may call to mind the spectre of Amy Winehouse, whose Old-Soul-With-Fresh-Wounds approach to 21st-century R&B also seems to animate Adele on the digitally tweaked strut of “Cry Your Heart Out” (a.k.a. It’s like I’m noticin’ everythin’ a little bit more I’ve never seen the sky this color before The Fantastic Intro Song, produced in a rad one-off by Childish Gambino cohort and Black Panther/ The Mandalorian scorer Ludwig Göransson) is a genuine marvel with a jazzy delicacy, every syllable achingly fragile but burnished with gold: It helps, too, that she sings the hell out of it, as naturally she sings the hell out of everything: the smoky bombast, the bellowing virtuosity, the vibrant personality.
The Volcanic Piano Ballad You Were Prepared For) is therefore infused with drama, with real-life pathos. This new volatility keeps even the more conventional Adele-type moves on 30 from sounding too familiar: A line like “I had no time to choose / What I chose to do” from “Easy on Me” (a.k.a. The whole thing sounds like the personal/maternal reckoning of the club-going lady from Drake’s “Marvins Room,” and it also sounds unabashedly personal and stridently messy, as Adele records go. Not all of it works, and it’s all quite chaotic, but you couldn’t accuse any of it-not one luxurious, immaculately sung second of it-of complacency. As a purely musical matter, Stupendously Sweet to Stupendously Mean is quite the whiplash transition, but given the news that Adele prevailed upon Spotify (which owns The Ringer) to remove the Shuffle button from all album pages, it’s clear that 30’s precise track list, and the emotional chaos in which it revels, is of paramount importance to her. That’s what I get for trying to mine this record for tabloid intrigue. It’s so hard to digest, usually I’m best aloneīut every time that you text I want to get on the next flight homeĪ further wrinkle, though: Per this month’s Rolling Stone cover story, “Woman Like Me” is not about her ex-husband, Simon Konecki, nor is “All Night Parking” about her new boyfriend, Rich Paul, and in fact both songs are about a mystery guy she dated in between, and so really we’re dealing here with a brisk two-song suite about a post-divorce love affair that started with butterfly-inducing promise but quickly collapsed into exasperated despair, so then she started sitting courtside with LeBron’s agent instead.
It’s all happenin’ so easily (like, oh my God) I don’t know how you got through to me (I’m so cold) And plenty apt, too, given the coquettish jazz-club lilt with which Adele purrs the verses (complete with even flirtier backing vocals): “Woman Like Me” is immediately preceded by “All Night Parking (With Erroll Garner) Interlude,” a lovely and amorous detour (produced, as is more than half the record, by frequent Adele collaborator Greg Kurstin) drenched in sun-shower piano arpeggios (courtesy of vibey Michigan musician Joey Pecoraro’s 2017 sample of a blissed-out 1964 jam from jazz pianist Erroll Garner), and I think you’ll agree that “The Stupendously Sweet Song” is a way less confusing title for that one. “Woman Like Me” (one of three tracks produced by Inflo, from the fantastic British R&B collective Sault) is by far the most confrontational moment on 30, which vacillates between abject loneliness and steely resignation, between fresh-divorcée frivolity and bleary hangover piteousness, between fixation on a past love and cautious exaltation over a new one.