Adele: When I was 30 years old, I sat with my own rain

Adele’s album ’30’ is like a therapeutic journey in which the ‘English nightingale’ sees suffering as normal, no longer lingering or nostalgic.

Adele appeared on stage as dusk began to fall outside the Griffifth Observatory. It’s been more than four years since she last sang in public during a performance at Wembley Stadium in front of 195,000 spectators.

Adele performed on the show “One Night Only”. Photo: CBS

The special One Night Only program aired on November 14 on CBS television station only invited a few dozen special guests, but more than 10 million people around the world watched it on television and online platforms. As soon as the piano played, Adele sang “Hello” twice, many audiences immediately felt like they were being penetrated.

It seems like someone has seen the sadness that seems to have settled into sediment inside us.

The first line in Hello that millions of listeners have memorized:

Hello, it’s me, I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet to go over everything.

Adele’s image when returning after 6 years since the album ’25’. Photo: Vogue

A song that now no longer just means a question directed at a certain lover, but also directed directly at the audience, those who have “clung” to Adele’s music to get through love affairs, Those who have been waiting a long time for Adele’s return, since the album 25 in 2015: Hello, it’s me, I wonder if after all these years, you still want to meet again and talk about the old days.

The day the single Easy on Me opened the way for Adele’s album 30 , there was a fan page where fans shared the MV with the funny caption: “Welcome back ‘Nhan Nuong Nuong’ after 6 years of being lost.”

She hasn’t made music in six years, while her colleagues continue to release new albums, even someone like Taylor Swift has since released four new albums and recorded two old albums. Compared to them, Adele seems leisurely but that’s not necessarily the case: she treats her throat, climbs mountains, lifts weights (she revealed that she has trained to a weight of 160-170 kg, like an Olympic athlete), and lost weight. , end a marriage, sink into misery and pick yourself up.

The longer the wait for Adele, the greater the expectations for Adele and 30 . Not to mention 30 is also a post-divorce album. If there is a genre of music that will always endure regardless of the times, no matter how much jazz has receded from its glory, whether rock is still alive or dead, or how long rap will dominate, it is heartbreak pop.

Because at all times, there are people who suffer because of love.

Fleetwood Mac’s best album, Rumors , was a farewell to love after drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie were both let down by marriage. The most beautiful album of the legendary Carole King , Tapestry, was also made when she broke up with her husband – the musician, the greatest soulmate of her life. Recently, there’s been Katie Melua, Kacey Musgraves, Lorde, all going through a marriage and their first move: dedicating an album to loss and heartbreak.

Now, who knows how to sink into the ocean of passionate suffering, who is more devoted to the beautiful cruelty of failed love than Adele?

Photo: Vogue

It can even be said that there are always two stages to overcome after a broken relationship: the first stage is when we learn to accept everything that is broken, the second stage is when we learn to normalize Adele’s music – always the ultimate test. Sometimes we feel elated and feel like we’ve healed our heart after a love affair, then suddenly somewhere a belt or an Adele song sounds: ” Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead” (Sometimes love remains forever but sometimes it only leaves pain) – like the lyrics of the song Someone Like You , we realize that nothing can be put behind us.

The layers of tape peel off and our heart is revealed as a crushed block. The pain is still here.

Adele’s disc ’30’ was released on November 19. Photo: RemoNews

So if a young love at the age of 19 can make Adele write the love song Someone Like You that exposes us like peeling an onion, then 30 must be many times more poignant.

30 is indeed a poignant album, but not in the way the audience still thinks of Adele, which means it must be miserable as if a fierce tornado had just swept away everything. Of course 30 is also painful, sometimes broken, but if you need a comparison, 30 is probably like a pain healing journey.

‘Strangers by Nature’ – opening song of album ’30’. Video: Adele

The album begins with Strangers by Nature with mournful and gloomy lyrics: “I will bring flowers to the graveyard of my heart, to my lovers, in the present and in the darkness.” Both the music and Adele’s singing are as gloomy as a requiem. Coming to Easy on Me, the most “Adele” song in 30 – written like a letter never sent to the person who needs to hear it – once again clings to the listener with a strong thread of depression. The next two songs – My Little Heart and Cry Your Heart Out – are when the suffering reaches its peak. Instead of ebbing and flowing in her vocal range, Adele retreats into sideways melodies, sometimes sobbing loudly, sometimes accusing herself, but most of the time like a lingering ghost.

‘I Drink Wine’ – a song that is being loved by many people in the album ’30’. Video: Adele

But with Oh My God, Can I Get it and I Drink Wine, she seemed to wake up after a period of lying on the ground, especially with I Drink Wine – a song that when heard makes it feel like Adele just held a glass of wine in her hand. , swaying and spontaneously singing to it. Even so, the healing journey is never smooth. Just revived with I Drink Wine, right after that All Night Parking was again tinged with guilt and Woman Like Me had the intention of blaming. Only in the last three tracks – Hold On, To be Loved and Love is a Game, the emotional darkness is gradually washed away, the pain is still there but full of forgiveness with oneself.

30 released on November 19. Just a week earlier, Taylor Swift re-recorded Red . Both albums come from women who loved hard and suffered hard.

Such an occasion for the audience to listen to the differences between them.

Taylor Swift is like an impressionist, sweeping brushstrokes to capture each scene of love’s memories: the scarf, the old album, the dance in the kitchen under the refrigerator light, the movies. Christmas, James Taylor records, handwritten scraps kept deep in pockets. It is a very detailed music about place, time, faces, personalities.

And Adele, as a person, is an expressionist. In her music there are not many specific images, it is rarely clear where or when, it is difficult for the listener to imagine exactly what the person she loves is like, and that faceless person becomes a character of the story. In general, all of us have someone like that.

That’s how Adele’s music sticks in the listener’s mind.

Adele’s four albums (from left): 30, 25, 21 and 19. Photo: Columbia/Melted Stone

But even that expressionism in Adele is different. Put Easy on Me in parallel with Someone Like You ( 21 ), When We Were Young ( 25 ) and Make You Feel My Love ( 19 ). Although Make You Feel My Love is a composition by the legendary Bob Dylan, Adele sang as if it were her song from her debut album.

They are all the best songs on each album they appear on, and what they all have in common is their prayers. In Someone Like You , she tells her ex-lover not to worry, she will find someone else like him and wishes him all the best in life, then in the next moment she begs him not to forget her – The two sentences could not be more contradictory and confusing. In When We Were Young , she begged her lover to let her take a picture, in case that moment never came again. In Make You Feel My Love , she begs for love, promises to hug him for a million years, and will go to the ends of the Earth for him, despite the storms at sea. Those three requests ultimately put the lover first. As for Easy on Me , she still begged him to be merciful to her, but now she put herself first and said she gave up.

19 , 21, 25 both end with a piece of music for someone or something else. Hometown Glory is Adele for the London suburb where she grew up, Someone Like You as said is Adele for her ex-lover, Sweetest Devotion is for her new born son. At 30 , with the final song Love is a Game, Adele addressed no one other than Adele herself:

I can love me. I can love again. I love me now like I loved him.
I can love me. I can love again from the beginning. I love me like I loved you.

‘Love is a Game’ – the closing song of album ’30’. Video: Adele

Adele is different, of course, not only because everyone is different, but precisely because she is over 30 years old.

At 25 , Adele was still very young but was nostalgic for her youth. She sings that life passes by like a flash, missing the old atmosphere, missing friends, missing mother, missing when life was a party for us to waste. She sings that she’s crazy about getting older, and that her youth is like a movie, like a song to sing . Yet at 30 , a time when people should be more nostalgic, Adele is not. Even in the most desperate moments of her life, Adele was not nostalgic. She may be scared, even “never been so scared”, she may be lonely, she may feel that she is having a personality disorder, she may also feel that her heart has become a cemetery but she does not linger. or nostalgic.

Actually, it’s not that 30 isn’t as painful as 19, 21 or 25 , but it’s that it has suffered to the point of considering suffering as a normal thing, and thus transcending suffering.

During a conversation with Oprah Winfrey in One Night Only , Adele said that when she was away from music, she really wasn’t as profound as the lyrics she wrote. She also doesn’t know where the emotions to write music come from, but over the years, she has learned to sit with her emotions, no matter what they are. At the age of 30, people live in the present, even if that present is a storm they created themselves, they still “sit in the rain of that storm” ( Cry Your Heart Out ).

A writer once wrote: “Life is islands of bliss in the middle of an ocean of sadness, and after the age of 30, those islands become increasingly rarer.” But when 30 years old, people do not cling to the islands, nor are they afraid to immerse themselves in that ocean of sadness until they find comfort and a reason to live for the present right there. With Adele’s “question” in One Night Only for the audience, that:

Hello, it’s me, I wonder if after all these years, you still want to meet again and talk about old times?

The answer is: Of course, but it’s not just about reviewing old times.