Six years later, Adele makes a huge return with a new single, ‘Easy on me’

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, commonly known by her first name ‘Adele’, has been in the spotlight since her teenage years. Her 2008 critically acclaimed debut album ‘19’ saw records like ‘Daydreamer’ and ‘Make You Feel My Love’ set the stage for what will become one of the most successful singer-songwriter careers of an entire generation. Her follow up album, ‘21’, was an assembly of break-up songs [still relevant till tomorrow]; ‘Set Fire to the Rain, ‘Someone Like You’, and ‘Rumour Has It’, [just to mention a few]. It seemed every song Adele dropped had different fan bases that united under the intense feeling of young love, heartbreak’s vague nature, and the need for modern female liberation in the early 2010s.

2015s ‘Hello’, a groundbreaking number off her third studio album, ‘25’, was a gilt-edge project that seemed to be the peak of this once 19-year-old Tottenham girl, but rather, was the stepping stone for global accolades and a cemented A-list celebrity status.

However, what seemed to be an endless ride into the sunset turned into temporary retirement. Around this same time, for personal or public reasons, other artists, including Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, and Kesha, deemed it necessary to execute musical hiatus.

Adele, the 15x Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, went through a public divorce in 2019 with her ex-husband ‘Simon Konecki’ during her career pause. In a recent interview with Vogue, she stated;

“We got married when I was 30… and then I left.” “It just wasn’t right for me anymore,” she added. “I didn’t want to end up like a lot of other people I knew. I wasn’t miserable miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first. But, yeah, nothing bad happened or anything like that.”

Adele Pulse Nigeria

One must understand, matters as critical as marriage and custody battle with a nine-year-old son in the picture deserved more attention from the singer than an audience who had begun seeking out other Pop & Hip Hop acts for emotional attachment anthems.

Usually, when artists take breaks, it is expected they suffer a decline in social media engagement, face difficulty in comebacks or even confront partial boycotts, but that is not the case with Adele. Even in her me-time, Adele’s accomplishments and hits were never excluded in the right conversations.

Her inspiring body transformation, overall positivity to her 42 million Instagram followers, and behind-the-scenes philanthropy work in the last six years complimented her image as a chart-topping performer.

Speaking of chart-topping, in 24hrs of ‘Easy on me release, the song broke BTS’s ‘Butter’ with 24 million streams on Spotify. In six days, The music video has amassed 94 million views on YouTube, and in five hours after release, it cracked the billboard hot 100.

Aside from the empathetic resonance ‘Easy on me’ bears, The melancholy ballad reminds us that the Adele we know and have missed still exists. Her powerful and unattainable vocals deliver thought-provoking lyrics layered with piano chords, appended by a black & white music video directed by Canadian filmmaker ‘Xavier Dolan’. He was also at the helm of Hello’s visuals in 2015.

In 2021, Artists dread the idea of being confined in a genre box. But notwithstanding all her projects being pop/soul category, Adele is in no box but a lane[journey] of her own. One she began as a teenage girl on ‘19’, morphed into a young adult with the world at her feet on ‘21’, transitioned into mother navigating early marriage and parenthood on ‘25’ and now, a full-grown woman living her best life in ‘30’.

This artistic growth and career journey is one which this writer finds rare and privileged to have been a part of and will continue to, wherever the number ends.

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Israel Olorunnisola is a freelance creative. When he is not writing about Film, Music, TV or Pop culture he is telling stories on Wattpad.

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