“the best for nervous flyers”

November 16, 2015 11:24 AM

“I’m 60% excited,” says Adele, directing me to a couch beside a set of speakers, “40% shitting it.” She’s invited me here today to hear her third album, 25.
posted by ellieBOA (66 comments total)

Man, I feel bad for her ex. She needs to let it go and stop calling him. She also needs to upgrade from a flip phone. Why didn't she ask metafilter for relationship advice? Oh well, I guess our advice is too practical to inspire platinum albums.
posted by janey47 at 11:51 AM on November 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

I dare anyone with a soul to listen to Hello and not cry.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:59 AM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, accurate.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:00 PM on November 16, 2015

Adele Dazeem has a new album?
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:04 PM on November 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm still getting regular emails from the person who inspired this AskMe, four years after telling her never to contact me again (she's upped her game to sending me unsolicited nudes and telling me about her current abusive relationship). I've never once replied. Every time I hear Hello, it's a reminder for me that a statistically significant portion of the population thinks that this is what romance looks like.

I have zero interest in being a part of the Adele song that many people imagine their lives to be.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:05 PM on November 16, 2015 [26 favorites]

My kids could not roll their eyes any harder but every time that song comes on, I have to say, "Oh hey, Adele. We're just about to eat dinner, can we call you back?" And then I laugh to myself. #dadjokes
posted by chococat at 12:05 PM on November 16, 2015 [34 favorites]

༼✷ɷ✷༽ finally i can link to this greatest graham norton episode with ADELE and MIRANDA HART ༼✷ɷ✷༽
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:13 PM on November 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

I dare anyone with a soul to listen to Hello and not cry.

Forced myself to do just that yesterday, and again felt really creeped out by an Adele song. I imagine her as a stalker, or one of those ex girlfriends who you have to apologize for whenever you see them in mixed company...
posted by Chuffy at 12:13 PM on November 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

That's interesting, PU, because Hello reads to me as someone beating themselves up, realizing that what they want to say doesn't want to be heard by the person they want to say it to, and ultimately having to come to terms with the consequences of their actions and subsequent loss. It's a bookend to Someone Like You, I think; that song was all about pining for something you can never have again, while Hello is about coming to terms with that fact.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:15 PM on November 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

I gotta say, I usually alternate between 100% and 0% shitting it. Beyond that, things get a bit complicated...
posted by selfnoise at 12:17 PM on November 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

I dare anyone with a soul to listen to Hello and not cry.

Forced myself to do just that yesterday, and again felt really creeped out by an Adele song. I imagine her as a stalker, or one of those ex girlfriends who you have to apologize for whenever you see them in mixed company...

Soooo much historical pop music could interpreted as the musings of an obsessive murderer, and it's usually men. So a little payback is overdue.
posted by selfnoise at 12:19 PM on November 16, 2015 [12 favorites]

I dare anyone with a soul to listen to Hello and not cry.

My two daughters have been singing the chorus to this song without pause for about 2 weeks straight now. It's possible.
posted by mcstayinskool at 12:21 PM on November 16, 2015 [8 favorites]

In a playback room much like the one at XL, Rubin was blunt: no good.

I really want to hear those songs, because the question in my mind is this: were they no good, or were they no good in comparison to her previous albums? Like, would those junked tracks be a hit out of the park for any other singer?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:23 PM on November 16, 2015

I dare anyone with a soul to watch this video and not cry.
posted by not_on_display at 12:26 PM on November 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

Soooo much historical pop music could interpreted as the musings of an obsessive murderer, and it's usually men. So a little payback is overdue.

Adele: the new Sting.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:28 PM on November 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

If this is one of the discarded tracks, I can only cross my fingers for a leak.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:28 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

“40% shitting it.”

I'm still always happily surprised that UK newspapers will print a sentence like that without censuring it.
posted by octothorpe at 12:30 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah boy if you've ever been on the receiving end of this kind of shit Hello is like haha okay Adele I know you've got a brand to remind us about here but maybe branch out a little (cranks dial hard)
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:44 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Adele: the new Sting.

Nah, "Every Breath You Take" gets interpreted as a pretty love song, when it's intended to be the musings of an obsessive murderer.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 12:54 PM on November 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

Sting: the new The Vogues -- "There is someone walking behind you, turn around, look at me. There is someone watching your footsteps, turn around, look at me."

My wife and I like to sing this as a creepy stalker around her mother, because her mother loves the song. "It's not like that!" she says, and we just laugh and laugh.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:03 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I always liked The Beloved's song Hello from 1990.
posted by w0mbat at 1:22 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I dare anyone with a soul to listen to Hello and not cry.

I usually switch the station before the chorus hits, so I just listened all the way through (on my studio monitors! a rare treat!). It's a very nice production (the soaring choruses! the even-bigger finish!), but man, this kind of glurgey ballad is just not for me. Which is fine.

That said, much like the Noel Gallagher piece the other day, I didn't really have an opinion of Adele the person before, and now I think she's pretty neat.
posted by uncleozzy at 1:23 PM on November 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

after a while I just refused to accept a life that was not real.”
What seemed unreal about it?
“Like.” She thinks. “Like, becoming OK with having things done for you. Or – no – expecting things to be done for you. I’ve had a few moments like that. And it frightened me. I think it was something simple like running out of clean clothes. And me not having the initiative to wash my own clothes. I was annoyed that my clothes weren’t clean.”
When was this? “Peak-y. Around the time of 21, when I was on top of the mountain.”
So? “So I told myself I’d better abseil down. And go and do my fucking laundry.”

And this is why I fucking love Adele. You just know that she means this, she's not playing some "oh no really I do my own laundry" schtick. I like her music but more than anything I want to be her friend.

I dare anyone with a soul to listen to Hello and not cry.

I have avoided this song and video like the plague because I know without a doubt that it will break me.
posted by billiebee at 1:28 PM on November 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

adele in rolling stone

The lyrics sound like she's addressing some long-lost ex, but she says it isn't about any one person — and that she's moved on from the heartbreaker who inspired 21. "If I were still writing about him, that'd be terrible," she says. "'Hello' is as much about regrouping with myself, reconnecting with myself." As for the line "hello from the other side": "It sounds a bit morbid, like I'm dead," she says. "But it's actually just from the other side of becoming an adult, making it out alive from your late teens, early twenties."

so maybe people can get off her clit about how she's some terrible stalker...
posted by nadawi at 1:37 PM on November 16, 2015 [24 favorites]

Man, I feel bad for her ex. She needs to let it go and stop calling him

I feel secondhand embarrassment for her every time I hear that one song where she's showing up at her ex and his new girlfriend's house. I can't listen to it.

And like many Tumblr users, I don't know what "rolling in the deep" means.
posted by discopolo at 2:06 PM on November 16, 2015

so maybe people can get off her clit about how she's some terrible stalker...

When Ray Bradbury said that Fahrenheit 451 wasn't about censorship, someone around here commented that maybe he shouldn't have included so much book-burning, then.

Adele can say that the song is about re-connecting with herself, and she may even think that, but the lyrics 100% support the interpretation that she's refusing to leave someone alone who would rather not have anything to do with her.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 2:08 PM on November 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

yes it is unlikely that she knows what a song she wrote herself is actually about
posted by billiebee at 2:12 PM on November 16, 2015 [20 favorites]

I imagine her as a stalker, or one of those ex girlfriends who you have to apologize for whenever you see them in mixed company...

Soooo much historical pop music could interpreted as the musings of an obsessive murderer, and it's usually men. So a little payback is overdue.

I can't listen to that "Every Breath You Take" Police song. That is the very worst stalker song ever. Adele's is just an unexpected guest coming over slightly inebriated with a gift basket and a wedding present compared to that one.

Shudder.
posted by discopolo at 2:12 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

yes it is unlikely that she knows what a song she wrote herself is actually about

If this song is a meeting of Adele and Adele, it means that Adele (who identifies herself as being in California) doesn't know if Adele ever got out of her hometown. Also, it means that Adele (who says that she hasn't done much healing) thinks that this clearly doesn't tear Adele apart.

Which, I guess, is possible in an ending-of-Fight Club sort of way, but it doesn't strike me as the interpretation that most people would take away.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 2:31 PM on November 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's also possible to read verse-Adele as the lovelorn, and chorus-Adele (who is speaking from the other side--as she says, the other side of surviving that kind of heartbreak) as talking to her younger self. It's not like lyrics are as literal as you're making them out to be.

I'm not wishing to invalidate your experience, and it must be awful to have that person following you. I'm saying that there are other interpretations of the song, and the artist herself has been clear about her intended meaning, so maybe it's worth taking that into consideration.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:36 PM on November 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

...is it me you're looking for...
posted by Sys Rq at 2:44 PM on November 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

It's more the case that when you write something that's very personal and spend a lot of time with it you become the least qualified person to say what it's really "about" because you're too close to it. And that's okay! That's why we have literary criticism. If you can go into the text and make a case that the narrator is talking to herself then there you go. Personally, looking at the lyrics, I can sort of see it, but maybe that's because I've also wanted to write love letters to my past self and apologize to her for screwing her around.
posted by bleep at 3:25 PM on November 16, 2015

Lionel calls Adele to say Hello
posted by kirkaracha at 3:46 PM on November 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Hello" goes on my "Hello" playlist. I really have this. I have a lot of oddly specific playlists. Some of the other songs:

Hello Again by The Cars
Hello, I Love You covered by The Cure
Hello, Goodbye by The Beatles
The Chamber of Hellos by Wire Train
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye by Soft Cell
If You See Her Say Hello by Bob Dylan
Hello by Oasis
Hallo Spaceboy by David Bowie
Hello Its Me by Todd Rundgren
Hello by Crimson Apple (also recently added with Adele)

I don't deliberately download songs to put on these playlists but I make them obsessively.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:01 PM on November 16, 2015 [10 favorites]

Only metafilter could rob a pop song of all it's nuance.
posted by valkane at 4:07 PM on November 16, 2015

Soooo much historical pop music could interpreted as the musings of an obsessive murderer, and it's usually men. So a little payback is overdue.

I guess I did put gender into that. It wasn't my intention. I've always hated Every Breath You Take, for instance. I actually don't mind Alanis Morissette's You Oughta Know, it doesn't seem...stalky...more like it's just a big "F-you."

Taylor Swift and Adele creep me out.
posted by Chuffy at 4:42 PM on November 16, 2015

I will drive past your house and if the lights are all down
I'll see who's around

One way or another, I'm gonna find ya'
I'm gonna get ya', get ya', get ya', get ya'
posted by Cookiebastard at 4:47 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I drove all night / crept in your room / woke you from your sleep to make love to you / is that all right?
posted by billiebee at 4:49 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I remember a lot of the same criticism when Sarah McLachlan released Possession (even after she'd explained that it was, like Every Breath You Take, about fans stalking her).

And yet there's very little such criticism when men write songs about being obsessed with women. Both Adele and Taylor Swift unapologetically write about how relationships have made them feel, for good or ill. And they receive a lot of pushback... I guess women are only supposed to write about being happy and in love, or something. The criticism about the content of their songs is hopelessly gendered.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:51 PM on November 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

actually divined by radio's comment here says it much better, so listen to a woman instead of me please.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:53 PM on November 16, 2015

I dare anyone with a soul to listen to Hello and not cry.

My two daughters have been singing the chorus to this song without pause for about 2 weeks straight now. It's possible.

That's actually pretty impressive. Maybe it's because Adele is of a higher caliber song writing, but usually it only takes about 2 days of my daughters singing the latest pop release incessantly, and I can't stop crying.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 4:57 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

"If I were still writing about him, that'd be terrible," she says.

That isn't actually a denial

"'Hello' is as much about regrouping with myself, reconnecting with myself."

Via extended rumination : / Which we've all done, to a greater or lesser (or greater) degree.
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:36 PM on November 16, 2015

yeah but the sentence right before that:

The lyrics sound like she's addressing some long-lost ex, but she says it isn't about any one person — and that she's moved on from the heartbreaker who inspired 21.

is
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:45 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is that reported speech, though, or the interviewer's interpretation of that hypothetical conditional? (I don't care this much, I swear. It should be settled, though)
posted by cotton dress sock at 6:02 PM on November 16, 2015

even if she were singing to an ex, i find it weird that anyone assumes it's the ex from 21, as if she's been with 2 men ever, the infamous unnamed ex and her current partner.
posted by nadawi at 6:19 PM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Artists can talk themselves blue in the face explaining what a song "really means" but the fact is that, once it is out in the wild, it is up to the listener to interpret it. The artist is effectively removed from the equation, analysis-wise. So if most people think this is about a scorned ex-lover - and the video supports that viewpoint - then that is for all intents and purposes what it is about.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:52 PM on November 16, 2015

I guess I'm confused because "the lyrics sound like she's addressing some long-lost ex" and she seems to flash back to an ex in the video, but this about her regrouping with her past self? Something doesn't pass the smell test here...
posted by Captain Chesapeake at 7:03 PM on November 16, 2015

No, I mean I don't know which ex this is about, but it's definitely about an ex and not her inner five-year-old. She's directing us to a particular reading by saying (and showing) some things and not other things. I think it's more than fine to be vague about it in interviews, she doesn't owe anyone details, but that's pretty reachy.
posted by cotton dress sock at 7:10 PM on November 16, 2015

I enjoyed the article but mostly I want to make sure that everyone has seen this video of David Attenborough narrating the intro to the Hello video.
posted by carolr at 7:40 PM on November 16, 2015 [8 favorites]

And yet there's very little such criticism when men write songs about being obsessed with women.

This was a very popular and acceptable sort of song. It doesn't seem that way now though it no doubt that partly reflects the sort of criticism I read. I should say though that means sincere stalkerish songs. I think men do get significantly more benefit of the doubt that they are writing about a character rather than themselves.
posted by atoxyl at 9:02 PM on November 16, 2015

When I write my first album, it's not going to be about ex-boyfriends. It'll very clearly be about all you guys. Well, not all. Have to save some material for subsequent albums.

On the men and their stalker songs--it's pretty clear men were, until recently, encouraged to "win" a woman they fixated on who wasn't initially receptive to their overtures. And men still use that creepy "the one that got away" phrase to make a failed relationship (or a non existent one, even, where they just stared at some woman from afar) seem more significant.

(Though now that I think about it, I'm never going to read that phrase the way I used to anymore. Got away from what? His net? His creepy windowless van? His isolated cabin? Shudder.)
posted by discopolo at 10:58 PM on November 16, 2015

"I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner..."
posted by Superplin at 12:10 AM on November 17, 2015

It's not just 'loss' of a person that Adele puts into her most successful songs, it's 'loss' in the far bigger sense of loss of a time or a place or a feeling, or an 'Eden'. This is loss that cannot be reversed even if the apparent object of love were to return. This feeling is there in that strange line that stands out very strongly in 'Someone Like You', 'bound by the surprise of our glory days.' And her first big hit was 'Hometown Glory' which was a very ashy, melancholic wander through streets of her childhood rather than a conventional love song. That song, and its unique atmosphere of depth but accessibility, set her off on the path to megastardom rather than the quite ordinary sub-Amy Winehouse type of retro soul song she also tried.
posted by colie at 12:17 AM on November 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I drove all night / crept in your room / woke you from your sleep to make love to you / is that all right?

I mean I'd be ok with that but I imagine most people wouldn't be
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:28 AM on November 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

"I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner..."

Telemarketers never apologized when they called during dinner back in the mid-nineties & onwards. So give the woman credit for that.

Also, she doesn't want him back. She's not a stalker. She just wants to rip him a new one. There are better ways to do that, of course. But knows if she had a hotmail account to send him a long email? Maybe the phone was the easiest option. (And the call was clearly not "coming from inside the house.")

He could have let it go to voicemail. And maybe he did. But she doesn't want to hang out with him or meet his new girlfriend.
posted by discopolo at 1:14 AM on November 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Hello" goes on my "Hello" playlist. I really have this. I have a lot of oddly specific playlists.

Hello by The Beloved?
posted by Grangousier at 1:56 AM on November 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hello you fool, I love you
posted by night_train at 9:20 AM on November 17, 2015

Hello by The Beloved?

Oh holy cats I used to play that when I was a DJ in graduate school and have completely erased it from my memory. I'll download that tonight.

And pop it onto both my Hello playlist and my Songs I Used To Play When i Was A Dj Mega-playlist
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:17 PM on November 17, 2015

Soooo much historical pop music could interpreted as the musings of an obsessive murderer, and it's usually men. So a little payback is overdue.

That I dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little suped up 4 wheel drive,
Carved my name into his leather seats,
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,
Slashed a hole in all 4 tires...
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

Baby steps, I guess...
posted by Chuffy at 2:21 PM on November 17, 2015

I think everyone here will forgive "Hello" once they've heard the new single (released today) referenced in the article; "When We Were Young." There's a live version recorded at Church Studios, and her voice is absolutely simple and incredible. Do please try.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 4:22 PM on November 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

oh wow, yes. *clicks replay*
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:30 PM on November 17, 2015

NYT Review. Most fun is the appended

Correction: November 18, 2015
An earlier version of this review misstated a song lyric. Adele sings “Hello from the other siiiiiide,” not “outsiiiiiide.”
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:06 AM on November 19, 2015

"Million Years Ago" is either plagiarised or it's a brand new standard that you are going to hear for the next 50 years, or both.
posted by colie at 10:06 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

i'm listening to the album now and holy cats i love it. it is far far better in headphones than out of my shit-ass speakers.
posted by nadawi at 5:07 PM on November 20, 2015

fun little bit of trivia, "when we were young" was written on one of phillip glass's old pianos.
posted by nadawi at 5:12 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Colie, I think the descending scale and spiraling melody recall Dusty Springfield and Yesterday, When I Was Young. I understand she is a big fan.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 8:35 AM on November 29, 2015