After a five-year hiatus, Adele has finally returned her voice to our radios with new song “Easy on Me,” and fans couldn’t be more excited. Since watching the song teaser that Adele released on October 5th, we’ve been anticipating its release. Since dropping at midnight last night, the song has become the fourth most-played song on Apple Music in the US, and the music video has received more than 23 million views within the first twelve hours which surpasses that of her 2015 hit “Hello”, which took thirteen hours to receive the most views. The song has now topped iTunescharts in the UK and US and is the first song release for her upcoming album 30 which is due to be released next month on November 19th.
As always, Adele uses her life experiences to influence her music, and the singer, who split from husband Simon Konecki in 2019, told British Vogue that she recorded most of this album for her 9-year-old son Angelo. “My son has had a lot of questions” about his parents’ split, she says. “Really good questions, really innocent questions, that I just don’t have an answer for.”
In true Adele style, the video displays minimal action so that we can focus on her oh-so-sweet voice. Following a backlash about Adele’s recent weight loss, she silenced the questions in an interview with British Vogue, explaining that she naturally lost weight due to anxiety. Telling the interviewer that “It was never about losing weight,” the video focuses solely on her face, reminding us of her staple look; thick winged-eyeliner accentuating her sparkling eyes. And with a big “fuck-you” to the rubberneckers who will flock to this video just to get a read on what’s going on with Adele’s weight these days, the coat Adele is wearing pretty much hides what’s going on under it. This video is about her, her voice, and her words—body-shamers be damned.
The video begins in black and white with the singer exiting a house, which fans have speculated to be the house Adele moves into at the end of her “Hello” music video. The parallels between the two videos clearly tell the story of Adele’s romantic journey from 2015 up until now. Talking to an unknown listener on the phone, Adele casually says that she’s “All done now. All packed. About to leave,” which is clearly representative of her leaving her past life and marriage. The camera then follows the singer into her car as she drives away from her newly “sold” home and begins singing, flaunting her famous eyes into the rearview mirror and waving her hand out of the window in a carefree, wave-like motion.
Adele chased pavements in her hometown thank walk to someones house. than built a house in rolling in the deep, she moved in that house in hello and left the house in easy on me. a story teller!! #EasyOnMe pic.twitter.com/qjAoHEf16g
— jay voorhees #freebritney (they/them) (@plattypusgrande) October 15, 2021
Much of the video focuses on Adele’s eyes and her hand waving through the wind, though we are given previews of the bystanders she passes along her journey; a happy family enjoying a bottle of bubbly, and a newly wed couple driving past. The two things that Adele is now missing in her life.
Halfway through the video is a flashback to Adele’s home where she is surrounded by flying sheet music, perhaps representative of the five years’ worth of Adele songs that we’ve missed out on. In this scene the video turns into color as Adele beautifully sings the song’s titular words, suggesting that she’s moving on from the past.
Photo: Screenshot from Youtube
