Adele
Simon Emmett*Adele didn’t go easy on us when she released her highly anticipated, heartfelt fourth studio album 30 on Friday (Nov. 19), via Melted Stone and Columbia Records.
Throughout the 12-track album, the queen of heartbreak anthems licks the wounds from her divorce with ex-husband Simon Konecki, salvages herself with copious amounts of wine, and holds onto the one thing she’ll never lose: herself.
Lead single “Easy on Me” has spent the last four consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts. Adele performed “Easy on Me” and three more songs from 30 — “I Drink Wine,” “Hold On” and “Love is a Game” — during her CBS primetime television special Adele: One Night Only, which averaged 9.92 million viewers, per time-zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen. On social media Wednesday, Adele shared a six-minute video of herself belting “To Be Loved” from her living room, and it certainly left everyone in a puddle of their own tears.
30 is the long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s 25, which had a record-smashing first week after selling 3.38 million copies in its debut week in the U.S. That was the biggest sales week of an album since Nielsen (now MRC Data) began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991. 25 spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won Grammy Awards for album of the year and best pop vocal album of the year.
Listen to 30 below.
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in London, joined by IDLES and Kojey Radical. He later collaborated with Fred Again.. on the electronic track “Lights Burn Dimmer,” which incorporates and reshapes elements from Jamie’s 2023 song “Hippodrome.”
During a conversation with Radio 1 presenter Jack Saunders on Wednesday, Aug. 19, Jamie called the collaboration a “big deal” for him. “That song, when I wrote it, I hadn’t realised until I heard Fred’s version how much hope was in the lyrics. I felt quite emotional when I heard Fred’s version, and his spin on it. That was really helpful for me, as I wrote that song at quite a difficult time in my life. To see it turned into a more euphoric thing was really quite lovely.”
Jamie will offer an early taste of the new album during a small, exclusive performance at Scala in London on Thursday, Aug. 20. The concert will be his first headline appearance since playing to 40,000 people at Finsbury Park, although he made a short guest appearance with Fred Again.. in February during the producer’s USB002 tour run at Alexandra Palace.
After breaking through in 2007 with the Mercury Prize nominated Panic Prevention, Jamie went on to release another four studio records, with each reaching the top 10 of the Official U.K. Albums Chart. He has also appeared at Glastonbury Festival on several occasions, including his widely praised headline performance on the Woodsies Stage in 2022.
Check out “3310” below.
