Hello

Illustration by Claire Mead

Hello, welcome to my cliché-ridden review of Adele’s new tune. The queen of breakup songs, and generic despair, has returned with a sizzling new cover of Lionel Richie’s classic. Only joking. The emotional roller coaster that is Hello has smashed all records, and left us weeping into tubs of discount Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. Hello has obliterated any resemblance of emotional appropriateness so that I feel total at ease weeping on the bus and I love her for it.

But, let’s get real. If we think about it Hello isn’t anything spectacular; at best its an average Adele track on a below average album. 25 lacks the innovation of a white woman singing pop/soul that her previous two albums sort of had. In a most cynical light, Adele’s songwriters crafted the perfect formula for a heart wrenching song and synthesised it with pop-tastic marketing. The whole release seems to be a contrived publicity stunt to help Adele pay for her new baby. The North London star roars around a dusty old house in her new video, while flashbacks of Dixon from 90210 pop up every now and then, likely to remind us that all love ends and we will die alone like a family dog under the porch.

Hello is standard Adele fare - those among us with weak tear ducts will be susceptible - but there’s no emotional punch to the solar plexus that you get on tracks like Hometown Glory or Someone Like You. I’m sorry, that was out of order. Adele I love you. Your absence left us bitter. They say that times supposed to heal us, but I ain’t done much healing. As I listen to Hello for the 100th time, I weep at the notion that greetings are now tainted with regret and despair and I realise the magic of the fact that Adele is back and better than ever.