Hear: young singer, Adele
"19" Album Cover Released: 2008
It’s rare that someone so young can be such a good songwriter. Songwriting is all about life experience and that normally takes, well LIFE to develop, to live through, to learn from. I can guarantee you’ve never seen a young talent like this before.
Adele’s album 19 hit the charts running, 19 was also her age at time of release in ‘08. In “Hometown Glory” a song about her love of Tottenham, an urban area of North London, exudes beautiful lyrics, such as:
I like it in the city where two worlds collide,
you get the people and the government,
everybody taking different sides.
She’s got a voice that can backup the soulful, heart-wrenching songs, one that reminds you of iconic singers Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald, whom she discovered by accident while looking over the Cd’s at a local chain store. Adele has a love and obsession with voices which I think is the reason she’s able to sound so beautiful. As a child she imitated the Spice Girls, among others.
Many of the songs from the album including, “Chasing Pavements” and “Melt My Heart To Stone” are about ex-boyfriends. Pavements is said to be about the night Adele was thrown out of a local pub after punching her boyfriend in the face when she found out he had been cheating on her. The idea of the song is that she’s chasing after empty pavements or rather, a boyfriend that will never be good for her. Boys, don’t mess with this girl’s heart!
In “Best For Last” she sings about a relationship in which her boyfriend keeps running back to the arms of his ex:
You should know know that you’re just a temporary fix,
This is not rooted with you it don’t mean that much to me,
You’re just a filler in the space that happened to be free,
How dare you think you’d get away with trying to play me.
All the while being in love with him which rips her apart, and ladies…I know, I know, you’ve been there.
She writes like she’s so much older than her years. Her lyrics are poetic at times, which make them just as lovely to read as to hear. As in, “Daydreamer” about the perfect man:
A jaw dropper, looks good when he walks,
he is the subject of their talk,
he would be hard to chase, but good to catch
and he could change the world with his hands behind his back.
This song shows that she’s also hopeful, that he’s out there, the RIGHT man; the one that will cook you dinner when you’ve had a rough day, rub your feet, support you no matter what, and make you laugh when you crave humor.
For being only 20 years old Adele has a lot to say and says it beautifully. When it seems like popular music is full of pretty faces with no talent, Adele is a refreshing, talented change that’s able to express her feelings and experiences in the most poetic of ways, which makes her the most beautiful of them all.
Up Next In Hear: Neko Case’s “Middle Cyclone” album
Tags: change, growth, Heartbreak, Joy, Life, Love, Pushing through hardships, Singer-songwriter, Soulful, Talent
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