Be a little careful with me, that’s the message Adele conveys on her new single Easy On Me, which appeared on YouTube, Spotify and other streaming services in the night from Thursday to Friday. The song is a taste of her new album 30 , which she announced for November 19.
The most surprising thing about Easy on Me is that it’s actually not surprising musically. A piano driven power ballad, natural and intensely sung the way Adele can do it so well – almost innocently. Song and video
(viewed half a million times on YouTube overnight within an hour) almost blatantly refer to Hello, with which the singer sealed an earlier comeback six years ago. That song also came after a long silence as an introduction to a new album, 25.
Like Easy On Me now it was co-written and produced by Greg Kurstin and also Hello was accompanied by a music video, made by Xavier Dolan, which featured a calling Adele and a mansion.
That mansion is now leaving the British pop star. She looks out the window for a moment, grabs her briefcase, gets into her car with a trailer full of household effects, and leaves. The black-and-white images take on color towards the end of the clip, as in the music the piano is helped almost unnoticed by a very careful bass run and a bass drum.
The piano dominates this song, which sounds like Adele sang it in one go. The text starts with some difficulty, with metaphors that seem to come from a self-help book.
There ain’t no gold in this river
That I’ve been washin’ my hands in forever
I know there is hope in these waters
But I can’t bring myself to swim
When I am drowning in this silence
Better is the chorus:
Go easy on me, baby
I was still a child
Didn’t get a chance to
Feel the world around me
That’s the gist. The singer has left her husband and asks for understanding. There is not a word of fiction in the lyrics because since Adele made herself heard for the first time in years last week, the whole world knows that she is separated from her husband Simon Konecki. Together they have a son, Angelo, who turns 11 next week.
The past three years have been hard for the singer, but have already produced at least one song that will be inevitable in the coming months, such as Hello that was six years ago. Adele (33) has nothing to worry about. The world will be careful with her, at least until November 19 when her new album comes out, on which she promises to reveal more about her personal life. In hopefully equally sober, directly appealing soulful songs.
