Adele's sophomore album "21"
By now everyone knows who “Adele” Adkins is, the young bluesy Brit that had us ‘chasing pavements’ a year or so back on her debut album “19”, and now with her new sophomore album “21” has us “Rolling In The Deep”, the hot single off the new album. The song became her first number one single in the United States and she became the only the second Brit singer to top both the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200 charts in the same week, it’s also gone ‘platinum’ in five countries. With it’s haunting, grumbly vocal and catchy, pounding drum, it’s infectious, it pulls you in and makes you feel (it was even sung by American Idol contestant Haley Reinhart on this years version of the show)
Another song that really leaped out at me, not that there is really a ‘bad’ song on the album, was “Turning Tables…I actually didn’t know this was an Adele song the first time I’d heard it because it was being sung by Gwyneth Paltrow…on Glee! I really like the song and went and googled it and found it was Adele’s, the simple piano and Adele’s powerful delivery pulled me in to the song (yes Paltrow did a good job of it too).
A song that I’ve heard mentioned several times from the album is “Someone Like You” where she talks about someone that she has to let go of, wishing the best to them, but hurting at their loss and telling them that it’s not over for her. This song not only comes in it’s original version but on the Deluxe Edition of the album it has a “live acoustic” version of the song. Speaking of the acoustic version there are actually three on the album, the afore mentioned ‘Someone Like You’ and ‘Turning Tables’ and ‘Don’t You Remember’. “Don’t You Remember” is one of my favorites on the album as well, that is very relatable and reminds me of something that may have been written by the great Carole King.
Adele was discovered by putting herself out there on MySpace (yay, social media strikes again!) and both “19” and “21” (thus named for the artists age when they were recorded) have both been met with critical success, and this 22 year old gal from the UK, even with all her success; is showing signs that she’s just getting started. Definitely worth a purchase!
1. Rolling in the Deep
2. Rumour Has It
3. Turning Tables
4. Don’t You Remember
5. Set the Fire to Rain
6. He Won’t Go
7. Take It All
8. I’ll Be Waiting
9. One and Only
10. Lovesong
11. Someone Like You
Deluxe Edition includes “live acoustic” versions of “Someone Like You”, “Don’t You Remember”, and “Turning Tables”
4.0/5.0