Adele continues to break records with 30, his new album. It becomes the first disc to sell a million copies in the United States for more than a year. The British singer takes precedence over Taylor Swift, who achieved the same performance two years in a row with her project Folklore, released in July 2020, and his seventh album, Loverpublished in August 2019.
The first week of 30 was remarkable with more than 692,000 albums sold by download, CD, vinyl and cassette. The second week was almost enough to make the million as 225,000 more projects passed.
Adele’s latest work has been a hit in the United States, and more generally around the world. In the UK for example, 30 recorded the best results in the first week with 261,000 sales, the best performance for an album since ÷ (Divide) by Ed Sheeran released in 2017.
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Between influences of the 1970s and modernity
After 19, 21 and 25place to 30. Six years have passed since Adele’s last album, and no doubt the return of the British singer was highly anticipated. Far from having returned empty-handed, Adele offers an album of twelve intimate tracks evoking her divorce with her former companion, Simon Konecki.
The album mixes modernity and atmosphere of the 1970s, and even if this marriage does not seem so obvious at first, listening, it works perfectly. No one would have doubted Adele’s ability to reproduce an atmosphere of the past, but when you disappear for six years, you have to know how to adapt to your return. And it is surprising.
“Adele” and risk taking
After the first title of the project and single of 30, “Easy on Me“, a piece that resembles what we know of Adele, “My Little Love” strongly denotes the singer’s discography. We enter the 1970s, heavy strings, almost “sexy” atmosphere, and we let ourselves be taken by these vocal notes, very inspired by the world of today’s rap, all along the song.
Moreover, Adele recently confided in an interview that these vocal notes had been inspired by Tyler, the Creator and Skepta, a figure of British rap. This piece dedicated to the son of the singer, by its sounds and the emotion it releases, is one of the pieces of 30 not to miss.
The following two titles are not without surprise either, since “Cry Your Heart Out” and “Oh My God” are two songs with very “optimistic” pop connotations. Even if the subject always revolves around depression, these two songs make you want to dance and are also different from what the British artist used to offer. We like risk taking.
This is followed by more classic pieces around the different emotions that Adele went through after her divorce. We retain the excellent “All Night Parking”, which tells of his first relationship after his separation. A love that did not materialize, but in this title hovers a very “musical” atmosphere. The song stands out from the others, as certainly this episode of his journey.
Conclude with emotion
Obviously, an Adele album could not exist without piano-voice. “To Be Loved”, the penultimate song of the project, which Adele had already sung in front of her webcam and posted on her YouTube channel before the release of 30, is a song reminiscent of “Easy on Me”. We return to the emotion, and we say goodbye to her ex-companion one last time before ending on “Love Is a Game”, in a more jazzy atmosphere, and more optimistic for the rest of the singer’s life.
Adele’s return is good, and we hope for her that her next album will be released on the occasion of a happier event.