Adele - Hello, new song review: 'Heartbroken and enormous voice'

The biggest star of the decade has released her comeback single
Confirmed: Adele's album artwork
David Smyth23 October 2015

“Hello, it’s me,” sang Adele simply this morning as the world woke up to meet the biggest star of the decade’s comeback single. Almost five years since her 21 album started on its way to selling over 30 million copies worldwide, putting it in the same bracket as Thriller and Rumours in a digital age when true blockbuster albums were thought to be a thing of the past, it’s fair to say that expectations are high.

In some ways, not much has changed. She still sounded reassuringly normal on Nick Grimshaw’s Radio 1 show this morning, introducing the new song by saying, “I’m gonna belch, I think.” After it was aired, she was endearingly weepy with relief.

In the video, she’s still lonely in black-and-white, having a tearful time with an ex. Lyrically, it sounds like she’s still semi-stalking the same guy from Someone Like You. “I must have called a thousand times,” she sings, which can’t have been much fun for him.

Big pop returns generally go in one of two ways: playing it safe to keep the masses on board from the start, or wrongfooting everyone with a shock sonic departure before unveiling the “real” hit further along the line.

Hello is an example of the former. It sounds simple with its soft opening piano chords, managing to appear big and expensive without being too showy – like the kind of handbags she probably buys nowadays. There are breathy backing vocals and minimal drums, allowing plenty of space for her voice to be heartbroken and enormous.

She could have been more adventurous, but a large part of her appeal is that she seems to have come from another time, when epic touring and a noisy social media presence were unnecessary as long as you had a great song. With Hello, she has another one.

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