30 October 2015
One-off Bond title song aside, how do you follow ‘Someone Like You’? With something like ‘Someone Like You’, of course! In fairness, the whole world loved ‘Someone Like You’ to the point that it overshadowed Adele’s other hits and defined her sound. So, why not give the people what they want? Also, a lot was riding on her next album and its lead single, so you couldn’t really blame Team Adele if they played the percentages on this one. All that is to say that I don’t recall a global wave of shock in 2015 when Adele’s new single was revealed to be an epic weepie piano ballad.
‘Hello’ had one brief: be the sure-fire melodramatic showstopper that could compare to ‘Someone Like You’ and launch new album 25. And job done: by God that “Hello from the other side!” is a blockbuster, and Adele delivers the absolute bejaysus out of it. Okay, the verses are just connective tissue: sparse dabs of piano chords; flattish melody; perfunctory lyrics. Even the rest of the chorus is fairly functional. No matter. Ten years later, we’re all still picking bits of that ginormous chorus hook out of our hair.
With the benefit of another album and chart-topping lead single since then for observation, this has now become the Adele modus operandi: first single is the big tearjerker ballad, and the rest of the album has the more interesting up-tempo cuts. Yes, I would have preferred if ‘Rolling In The Deep’ had been the takeaway and template instead: an appointment-listening pounding-piano-pop lead single to blast off every new Adele album cycle. But maybe ‘Hello’ serves the greater good. See you all in six chart-years’ time for ‘Hello Again’.
