no adele thread yet?

adele is such a fucking plodding pedestrian bore

adele should probably scrap the new album and redo it with this guy from "the voice" doing all the lead vocals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCzkD-vu84g

guy pwnd that song!

music videos w long intros = duuuuud and whats up with all the dialogue and noise? also just a lot of useless belting, as if that's supposed to make her sound like a good singer... esp lol when they zoom in on her at 2:50 and belting is out of sync, who edited this vid?

yes it is all so dull and poorly executed that it's.... more popular than star wars, huh

I was def impressed by the view count

well, something's connecting with people, is my point.

to me she kinds sounds off the rails on this song. "when i call you never seems to be home" - oh he's home, adele. he's home.

does popularity magically cancel out boring art?

I don't think the song is as poor as the execution, but I think - and this may ofc just be projection - that she has a lot of goodwill and that may account for some of the popularity

i just find it amazing that you can take this massively successful pop object and slate it on technical, craftsmanship grounds, when it's like, if it were that poorly executed surely you would not get that many people liking it?

i mean, either that or "execution" is maybe not as important to most people as it is to you

lots of popular stuff is poorly executed and/or boring! technical execution doesn't really seem important to casual fans

how could something boring be more popular than star wars

I think some unfortunate aesthetic choices were made in that video - I don't like long intros, and I think the background noise is annoying (in that way it reminds me a bit of the "Hold On We're Going Home" video which is unlistenable). That's not poorly executed, it's just something I dislike. The editing around 2:50 however is simply sloppy or there's something wrong with my computer. And I think a belting chorus is a bad way to showcase a good vocalist, but I'm very open for arguments.

On pure technical terms, it sounds like she is lifting her soft palette more and pressing less when she goes full barrel, likely an adjustment she made after dealing with nodes; her voice is still recognizably her but the knife edge that floated underneath it on most of her songs (particularly "Rolling in the Deep" and "Chasing Pavement") isn't there.

Even more so than Swift, Adele seems anecdotally one of the few acts I sense kids and adults like equally. I hear little kids singing Adele songs all the time, but when this new single came out several adult friends of mine on Facebook made "ZOMG Adele is back!" posts. And am I right that she barely even toured America? She played a capacity 2500 place here back in 2011, that was it for Chicago.

I think the song is a total bore, but the execution, from the announcement to the release to the song's themes seem perfectly suited to capitalizing on the type of popstar Adele is advertised as being.

in terms of ~feel~, sonic arc etc. this song reminds me a bit of leona lewis's "run" cover. except that was great and this is rather mediocre :\

a little too on the nose too, like damn after all these years you are still singing about the same shit in a hardly-different-at-all perspective

I don't find her an exciting artist myself qua music, but the massive, massive popularity of emotional songs about resignation, regret, loss, nostalgia and guilt interests me because I work on emotion and affect and melancholy in my scholarly other life, and when you have someone completely smashing the sales figures with work that is so much about wallowing in negative emotions that is really interesting even if she's not making "interesting music" (to me)- her fame x her art as an equation is interesting even if the art isn't, because it suggests a weird groundswell of collective feeling surfing on the appoggiatura and getting pleasure out of suffering

of course if it was my job to review and write about pop music and I lived in the city where her PR team / machine was grinding her in my face relentlessly I would really have no time for her shit at all so i feel u lex :)

her PR team doesn't have to work too hard tbh

I like the idea of hello being a reply to hotline bling...

supposedly it sounds like 70s soft rock!

hello rumer.

this almost makes the song acceptable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZwGLYjxdXU

this song is boring & terrible

I was walking down our alley and we passed a sorority house where what sounded like ten girls were singing along at the top of their lungs and when they hit the chorus, ouchhhhhhhh. Terrifying!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDWKuo3gXMQ

this one sounds to me a bit like that big ballad on the brandon flowers album (which in a way makes sense as reichtshaid produced the studio version)

could do with a bit of a donk on it though. there's a shellback song on the album, i'm intrigued by that at least

new song is just .. there.

The album is also just...there.

Holy Shit: http://m.billboard.com/entry/view/id/149035

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/adele-officially-breaks-nsyncs-single-843545?facebook_20151124

why did i ever like adele. this sounds like a reality show winner's album.

people love this though and seem to think she is the most talented thing ever . idk it's just ok

people are buying a personality (adele is pretty irresistible as a person) and an outlook on heartbreak, and the music is a functional device to deliver those things, it is "good enough"

she's such a great example of how far a "normal" persona gets you. "oh she'd be fun to go down the pub with" the fucking nigel farage of pop

xp!!

embodiment of yt privilege too obv, imagine a black woman singing ballads about heartbreak having even half her success in the past...two decades?

lol

So I just heard this for the first time, and the formula seems to be Pat Benatar verse + American Idol chorus, repeat

The consensus / ubiquity of Adele also reminds me of Macy Gray's popularity circa 2000, before anyone used the term "monoculture" to describe things that were bland enough for everybody to enjoy

i forgot another element, her voice, which you kind of have to admit is great? alongside that i'd add something about her JUDGMENT as a singer - she goes big when she needs to, she keeps it simple when she needs to

FIVE STARS in the new rolling stone

i thought it was well established that when it comes to the big acts rolling stone are whores

Adele is ... the Goddess in the Doorway.

They play a dance mix of "Hello" on the pop station here, I don't get it

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/Adele_-_Hello_%28Official_Single_Cover%29.png

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/417B43SPBCL.jpg

Tried to help a schoolteacher friend buy tickets this morning, but no dice.

you had to work late?

pic.twitter.com/hjhNsOTA75

— Adele (@Adele) October 18, 2020

this will surely be showered with grammys

It's an SNL episode - https://variety.com/2020/music/news/adele-saturday-night-live-h-e-r-1234808863/