Over two chords alternating ad nauseum, Adele spins a familiar tale: the broken promise of an everlasting love, the abstracted new flame as a reminder of everything that could have been. She ushers in a muted guitar and kick drum, which promises a cathartic release that never fully materializes. Natasha Genet Avery: “Just the guitar, please,” Adele says: a signal to the audience that the ensuing song will be #raw. There are parallel universes where Michael Hedges is alive and pairs this with “A Love Bizarre” in concert. If Jessie Ware or Laura Mvula had American pop ambitions, here’s the tune.īrad Shoup: The title is winkingly archaic the guitar pops and locks Adele shakes her shoulders. On “Send My Love,” though, her multitracked chorus vocal reduces the sentiment to rubble. Hiring Shellback and Max Martin for help adduces Adele’s determination to bend pop her way. Definitely in the music industry.Īlfred Soto: “You know we ain’t kids no more” is the most important line: a signal to Adele’s demographic, an insistence that pop music needn’t accommodate to the Snapchat crowd. (Even more terrifying: imagine that, but literal.) Did anybody, anywhere, listen to Adele for her potential to become this? “We ain’t kids no more,” Adele sings they may be the only two remaining people on Earth that ain’t. Max Martin, Shellback and Adele isn’t a collaboration, it’s a calculus optimization problem for profits, and like most word problems it doesn’t quite translate right into the real world, where the result sounds like the terrifying spawn of Taylor Swift and Jack Johnson.
That would be too complicated for this, though. Katherine St Asaph: Between the chords and the theme, I can’t stop hearing “ Lori Glory” with none of the girl-crush subtext. If you find it impossible to imagine anything that sounds substantially different than an Edward Sharpe remix of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” then congratulations, this world has defeated you. Try to forget what a Max Martin-produced Adele song actually sounds like in our universe, and imagine the array of possibilities for what it could sound like. Taylor Alatorre: I find that listening to this song is not nearly as enjoyable as reading its Wikipedia article, particularly the parts that list Max Martin and Shellback as producers. The failure to click is especially baffling when Serban’s other job on 25, “Water Under The Bridge”, is the biggest, lushest-sounding, and just outright best song on the album.
All the elements for something great are present, but they never mix not the guitar strums, not Adele’s campy vocal performance, and certainly not the unmemorable words. But mixing engineer Serban Ghenea makes this so laid-back and flat that nothing connects. Nonetheless, on paper, it should make for a perfect summer jam, which is probably the motive behind releasing it now. It’s interesting that Max Martin worked on this, as aside from the intentional “I Knew You Were Trouble” homage, few of his fingerprints are on here. Hannah Jocelyn: “Send My Love” is one of the more laid-back songs on 25, which means it should stick out considering the overblown nature of everything else on that album. Thomas Inskeep: Adele + Max Martin = acoustic guitar + click track + clichéd lyrics, and makes the oldest-sounding 20-something popstar around sound like a 40-something who’s trying far too hard. Will Adams: Adele singing on a Shellback/Max Martin song didn’t make sense six months ago, and it doesn’t make sense now. Pharrell Williamsīut really, who is this mysterious producer?
Only two songs are missing from the list (for now): 30 bonus tracks that are still best (and exclusively) heard on physical deluxe editions of the album.įor now, pour some wine, grab a box of tissues, and call your therapist: Here’s our official ranking of Adele’s songs. We included a number of officially released covers she has done, as well as bonus tracks and rarities (though many are still not on streaming, dedicated fans have uploaded them to YouTube for everyone to enjoy). This list includes every officially released song that she’s released as the lead artist, from her four albums and a few live records.
It’s no easy feat choosing what makes for the best Adele song - there’s not a single dud in the bunch. She has written more modern pop standards than anyone else in her generation, each single becoming an instant classic. She launched her career as a heartbroken teenager with 19 and is now in her thirties, digging deep into motherhood, love, regret and, of course, more heartbreak. Over just four albums, Adele has built the type of airtight canon other artists spend decades trying to achieve.
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