Adele has faced triumph, let down, silence and a brilliant come back all in a very short time. Adele had throat surgery in November 2011 and had to cancel the rest of her tour and disappear from view during one of the sweetest musical juggernauts in years. Since then, the Grammy Award winning singer who has become a greater phenomenon than any other superstar yet, was considering quitting the music industry all together. Her hiatus from music came to an end after the birth of her first child in October 2012, with Adele stating her son inspired her to start recording music again in order for him to “know what I do”.
This fall Adele released her third album 25 which sky rocketed on the charts breaking records. Unlike her previous albums, which were mainly about her break-ups, this new album is a make-up record titled as a reflection of her life and frame of mind at 25 years old. Making up for lost time. Making up for everything she ever did and never did. 25 is about getting to know who Adele has become. The album’s lyrical content features themes of Adele yearning for her old self, her nostalgia, and melancholy about the passage of time as well as themes of motherhood and regret.
Adele with mesmerizing performances and while wearing her heart on her sleeve, allows her audience to connect with her at a poignant personal level because she sings about her own life and opens herself up to vulnerability. That’s where that emotional connection comes from. In an interview she stated that she has sympathy for herself, she has sympathy for her listeners, they have sympathy for her, and she knows in that moment “that we are all there knowing exactly how each other feels. It’s like a big pact. You can just feel it. You can slice it.” Adele definitely gets the concept of group energy for the same purpose.
11 Things to Learn From Adele
While Adele seems to use her music as a mature platform to express her pangs, we get a sense of it being a therapeutic technique almost to the likes of Gestalt’s Empty Chair Interventions. Through the music on her album 25, Adele allows us to feel the same pains, overcome them and become whole in so many of life’s matters.
1. “Hello” – Play Out Your Conversation
25 opens with “Hello”, a piano ballad that borrows heavily from soul music. During the chorus Adele is heard singing the lines over layers of backing vocals, piano and drums which creates a wall of sound so nostalgic it connects us before we even hear the lyrics, which focuses on themes of nostalgia and regret and plays out like a conversation. It gets us thinking about what we may say to someone we have not seen for years, where there may be some unresolved feelings. The song almost encourages us to play out our words as if the person was in front of us as we might do with the Gestalt Empty Chair Intervention. It’s based on the idea of a whole being as connected with their environment, loved ones and memories. Therapy works toward creating full awareness of the here and now and the empty chair is one of many interactive techniques used to help engage the client’s feelings, thoughts and behaviors.
2. “Send My Love” – Focus on the Present & Let Go
“Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” has an upbeat and poppy sound. Adele describes it as a “happy you’re gone” song, which was inspired by an ex-boyfriend. It picks us up from the first track and forces us to focus on the present and positive even when it comes to the loss of a relationship. Adele teaches us to let go and be happy about it.
3. “I Miss You” – Intimacy at the Deepest Level is All Encompassing
“I Miss You”, is a drum-filled folk song that has been described as “explicitly seductive” due to the lyrics: “Bring the floor up to my knees/Let me fall into your gravity/And kiss me back to life to see/Your body standing over me.” It’s about intimacy on every level. It’s about sex, it’s about arguing, and sharing deeply intimate moments. The song blurts it all out as if she is simply drunk and honest. She stated in an interview that one of the reason she does not drink anymore is that getting drunk makes her panic when she wakes up the next morning. The other reason for the once hard-drinking South London pub girl to give up drinking cold turkey is that it is a pure “no – no” for a serious professional singer. Hidden in this beautiful ballad which is an emotional spill of the most intimate and sexual moments is an oxymoron – a lesson in self-restraint (when it comes to drinking).
4. “When We Were Young” – Treasure Life’s Little Moments
“When We Were Young”, a piano-led ballad is a reflective serenade about treasuring the moments you will look back on in years to come. The song teaches us that 50 years down the line, nothing else is going to matter, but the good times you had. Learn to accept the moment and look at the positive in it for the best future you can image for yourself.
5. “Remedy” – Motherhood Can Be the Remedy for Life’s Worst Moments
“Remedy” is a song Adele wrote about her son, Angelo, but she sang it for everyone that she really loves. When she wrote it, she got her confidence back and believed in herself. It’s the effect that motherhood can have on a person. Even if everything in life is wrong and you feel trapped with no solution in sight, the love that you feel for your newborn child gives you enormous strength to conquer all for this tiny life. You then become your child’s remedy for all of life’s trials. This love and bond is so powerful that it can give a person a new take on love and happiness towards the entire world.
6. “Water Under the Bridge” – Don’t Let Your Fears Over Take a Good Thing
“Water Under the Bridge” is a mid-tempo disco-pop song, featuring an electo-drum beat and a tropical, trip hop riff, with Adele proclaiming to her lover “If you’re gonna let me down, let me down gently/Don’t pretend that you don’t want me/Our love ain’t water under the bridge”. While the title of this songs sets up the expectation that this is a song about something that’s over, the opposite is actually the case. It is actually about an ongoing relationship where many people encounter the fear of getting serious even though you think that this is right for you. Many people often live in relationships with the fear of something going terribly wrong and waiting for the relationship to end even when there is no reason to think so.
7. “River Lea” – Our Childhood Can Impact Who We Are & Self-Awareness Is the Resolution to Betterment
The gospel-tinged “River Lea” talks about the singer growing up in Tottenham, London, England. As everyone’s childhood impacts them in positive or negative ways, it seems that where Adele grew up has made her unable to let anyone close to her. It’s in her veins to be that way now and hard for her to let go. Self-awareness about our childhood can give us insight into who we are presently.
8. “Love in the Dark” – Don’t Just Survive, But Live
“Love in the Dark” is a torch ballad that ends with “I want to live and not just survive.” The song encourages us to get out of a dead end relationship where you can’t see anything else but darkness. To fully live and not just survive in a relationship that is pointless.
9. “Million Years Ago” – Do You See Who You Want To Be In The Mirror?
“Million Years Ago”, an acoustic tune accompanied only by guitar, finds the singer pining “for the normality of her not-so-distant childhood. Entwined with Middle Eastern twists of background hums the singer is missing her carefree days before fame. She reflects on whether she really is who she wanted to be.
10. “All I Ask” – Accept and Be In The Present
In the final piano ballad “All I Ask”, Adele addresses a lover on what she knows will be their final night, processing the end of an affair in what feels like slow motion. This is about reflecting on a solid sense of accepting love lost, and dredges up the dreadful finality that resignation brings with it. However, the lyrics drop listeners right into the quiet moments that precede resigning to the end of a liaison. In essence, the song arrives at an emotional plane that’s devastating yet utterly relatable.
11. “Sweetest Devotion” – Once a Parent Embrace Your Devotion to Your Child
25 closes with “Sweetest Devotion”, an “uplifting” number written as a tribute to her son. This song is about being a parent. Once you become a parent something much bigger has happened in your life. It’s about embracing that your life is now about someone else.
Adele Is Therapeutic
In this album we see a mature Adele. She teaches us to be mature with our emotions as she does by using music as her muse for expressing her thoughts on life’s events, rather than causing public drama that many celebrities are known for. She shows us that it is very possible to restrain yourself when necessary, as every singer knows to avoid the vocal cords’ enemies: citrus, vinegar, mint, dairy, spicy or fried foods, fizzy drinks, caffeine, cigarettes, and alcohol, Adele Laurie Blue Adkins figures out how to avoid these things for the sake of her five-octave contralto as dynamic, award-winning, moneymaking, and record-breaking as hers. Adele doesn’t let fame get to her and has shown resilience to stand on her own in good times and bad times. She is whole. As a superstar whose music has appealed to almost all genres and age groups, she and her music has the potential of a new power for illuminating the depth of human experience. Adele shows us that we can uncover the wholeness in others and celebrate it by sharing anything we genuinely love.
