“Hello” by Adele, Monday, May 20, 2024 (partial repost)

Both Taylor Swift and Adele love the album format. This love for the format made both artists resistant to streaming platforms in the mid-’10s. In 2014, Swift removed her music from Spotify to protest the platform’s payment of artists. She didn’t add her music to Apple Music until 2015 and resubmitted her music to Spotify in 2017. Adele fought Spotify to turn off the default setting of albums to be on “shuffle.” She wrote on Twitter (now X) “This was the only request I had in our ever[-]changing industry! 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.”

IT'S NO SECRET THAT THE BOTH OF US ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.  In 2015, Adele was arguably one of the biggest artists. After struggling with writers’ block to follow up her 2011 breakthrough sophomore album 21, the singer released 25. The album was only released in stores and only the album’s singles were available on streaming platforms until seven months after the album’s physical release. Today, Taylor Swift is the biggest artist, but even as recent as 2021, Swift avoided crossing release dates Queen Adele, a courtesy Swift didn’t extend to Carly Rae Jepsen nor Billie Eilish whom she even released two additional versions of The Tortured Poets Department when Eilish released Hit Me Hard and Soft. Adele’s Grammy-winning 25 brought Adele back to the center of pop culture in what would become longer-than-average album cycles. She wouldn’t be back until 2021 with 30. Maybe Adele hasn’t hit a prolific period like Swift or perhaps she is more discerning about the music she releases. But like Swift and several other pop stars, Adele proves that the album is still alive. 

I MUST'VE CALLED A THOUSAND TIMES. Adele’s albums are curated collections of songs loosely based on themes she deals with at particular ages in her life. She is not the only artist who has made “age” albums, but she is certainly the biggest to have done so. When she released 25, she claimed that it was the last of her age albums, making 19, 21, and 25 a trilogy; however, she also released 30. Unlike 21, which had 3 major singles-- “Rolling in the Deep,” “Set Fire to the Rain,” “Someone Like You” -- out of the 5 released, 25 was mostly overshadowed by the lead single, “Hello.” Today's song needs very little introduction. Most of the time I pick pretty obscure music for my playlists, sometimes even having to add the lyrics or even create the artist's Genius page. However, 2015's "Hello" is a song that everyone's mom and grandmother knows. Furthermore, Adele is pretty much one of the least controversial figures in pop music, as shown masterfully in an SNL sketch. "Hello" is definitely meme-worthy. Nine years after its release, the emotion of the song has long since felt cliche; however, some days a cliche is really the best thing to describe your feelings.

Read the lyrics on Genius.