In the choice of the ballad Easy on Me to announce the release of 30, Adele’s new album, there was a message: six years after her previous album, the musician has remained the same. The excerpt and its music video signed Xavier Dolan can be listened to like the sequel to Hello, also put in images by the Quebec director. Fortunately, on her fourth career album, the British diva saw fit to get out of her comfort zone to explore other musical colors, without however taking the risk of offending the fans.
Adele Adkins’ new album, which bears a title inscribing it in the continuity of the previous three, has been for the past three years her anchor, her lifeline – her ” ride or die She wrote to her fans. A period described by the British singer as being the “most turbulent period of my life”. At the end of a thunderous promotional campaign whose culmination was the interview with Oprah Winfrey broadcast last Sunday, everyone now knows the source of this turbulence and, corollary, the first inspiration of the album: her divorce.
And yet, in terms of themes and expressed emotions, 30 is no different from 25 (published in 2015), 21 (2011) or 19 (2008): the pain of love is Adele’s business assets, with or without divorce. Thanks to her strong voice, her copper tone, her athletic tremolo, and love songs that have expertly enhanced her, Adele has become the great diva of the XXI.e century, borrowing from our national Céline this populist fiber, this down to earth and human side that makes her so endearing in the eyes of the public.
Of course she wasn’t going to change what works so well for her… Now 30 is nonetheless generous in surprises, even in daring. A record with uneven songs, both in writing and in interpretation, but from which emanates a real desire for renewal in terms of form. We will listen to it in two stages on side A, piloted by the director and co-composer (from the mega-success Hello) American Greg Kurstin, and the B-side, dominated this one by the organic and stripped-down orchestrations of the British Inflo (Dean Wynton Josiah Cover). This mastermind of the mysterious soul – hip-hop collective SAULT has revealed himself to be the secret weapon of soul singer Michael Kiwanuka, who had hired him to produce his excellent last album, Kiwanuka (2020), awarded the prestigious Mercury Prize.
Vocal foreground
If soul has been a main ingredient in Adele’s song since her debut album, her presence is even more insistent on 30, even in the orchestrations of strings and gospel voices that refer to the 1970s. Had it not been for these incongruous bits of conversation between Adele and her son, then for a testimony of the singer in tears, placed between two verses, My little love would have been a great soul ballad.
The brilliant collaborator Inflo bet everything on the voice of the performer in the second half of the album, surrounding it with simple piano chords, muted organ notes, a rhythm section reduced to its simplest expression. With the result of this little miracle of song titled Hold On, six minutes of pure soul, perhaps Adele’s greatest performance in the studio; it is preceded by Woman Like Me, a confidential composition distinguished by its sobriety, on a delicate groove made of acoustic guitar, choirs and drums.
Kurstin took charge of the more dynamic songs, sometimes playing daringly: in opening, Strangers by Nature looks like it came out of a 1950s Disney movie. Despite its title, Cry Your Heart Out is dapper with its linear, almost reggae rhythm, Adele’s manipulated voice hooking a simple and effective chorus to our ears. Similar efficiency on Oh my God, the rolling rhythm reminiscent of success Rolling in The Deep.
All is not pretty on 30, remind us of the composers and directors Max Martin and Shellback, who try the dance-pop coup (in the production more than in the orchestrations) on Can I Get It. A flop, Adele’s voice even sounding unrecognizable after passing through the hands of Swedish collaborators, like a pimple in the middle of the album’s face. At the end of the disc, To Be Loved, piano-voice collaboration with the Canadian Tobias Jesso Jr. (co-author of the very beautiful When We Were Young of the previous album), tragically lacking in relief, which Adele tries to compensate by shouting for six minutes and forty-four unpleasant seconds. ” Let it be knowned that I tried », She agonizes at the end of the song. Noted.