Adele’s 30: Album Review

Adele released her highly anticipated new album, 30, on Nov. 19. Full of heartbreak and healing, the album proves to be a true blend of Adele’s timeless ability to articulate her deepest emotions of love and loss. 

The album has been deemed the “blockbuster of the year” by Variety as they report 30 as the biggest opening album of the year. Adele’s album topping the Billboard album chart with the equivalent of 839,000 sales in the United States has enabled her to push past Drake’s Certified Lover Boy and Taylor Swift’s Red (Taylor’s Version) to claim the number one spot.  

Before even listening to the album, fans can see a hint of Adele’s personal transformation and new style by looking at her album cover. Going against tradition, this is her first album cover done in color. Previously, all of her album covers were in black and white.  

The cover echoes the type of personal growth she experienced ahead of this album, as discussed with Oprah during a primetime television special to welcome in her fourth studio album. Titled “Adele: One Night Only,” the concert was held for her closest friends and colleagues. 

Fans watching the special live on CBS observed a night of candid conversation and exceptional singing. The special featured the songstress belting her signature tracks while also showing snippets from her conversation with Oprah. 

As expected, Adele sprinkled a little gold into the special by debuting three new songs from her 12 track album. After hearing “Hold On,” “I Drink Wine,” and “Easy On Me,” fans quickly took to twitter to profess their excitement and increased anticipation for the rest of the album. 

Through those songs and the rest that fill the album it is made abundantly clear that this is Adele’s divorce album. In her song “My Little Love,” her poetic singing is mixed with voiceovers of Adele explaining her divorce to her son Angelo Adkins, age 9. In it, she tells him, “Mummy’s been having a lot of big feelings recently…I love your dad ’cause [sic] he gave you to me.”

Adding voice overs to her music is not something Adele has done before. It shows an attempt to add a fresh style to her music as the practice has become increasingly popular in current music. 

Two songs from her album that feel extremely current, almost shockingly so, are “Oh My God” and “Can I Get It.” While the songs are undoubtedly chart-worthy, they don’t have the classic feel fans can usually expect from Adele’s music. Though they are the can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head type of songs that are exciting to see Adele experiment with. 

All other songs on the album are clearly influenced by her previous work. “Women Like Me” and “To Be Loved” could be pulled right from her early albums as they feature mellow background tracks and Adele’s signature smooth tone. Whereas “Hold On” and “Easy On Me” sound most similar to her 25 album. 

“Easy on Me” was the first song to be released early on Oct. 15, ahead of the rest of her album. It sent fans into a tailspin as it had been six years since Adele released new music. 

The track is so quintessentially Adele that it could be the most remembered song from this album going forward. In it Adele floats through the song with such grace and control that it’s easy to see why she has become a household name. 

Also previewed before the release of the album, “Hold On” is played during an Amazon holiday advertisement, which first aired on Nov. 8. The advertisement features a young college student experiencing the effects of anxiety who strikes an unlikely friendship with her neighbor. The friendship is started when the young girl receives an Amazon package with a gift from her neighbor. 

Adele has also impacted another company, music giant Spotify. She requested that the streaming platform change the shuffle button to a play button when users stream albums, which Spotify agreed to. 

The change prompted Adele to voice her excitement on Twitter by tweeting “We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason. Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended,” and thanking Spotify for the change. 

Adele’s fans who are itching to see her perform her new album live will get a chance to as she announced a residency at Caesars Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The concert series titled Weekends with Adele will start in Jan 2022. A waitlist for pre-sale tickets is currently open.