Stock up on tissues and rosé: Adele is back to make your life feel at least 30 percent more dramatic. The lead single from her first studio album in six years, 30, lands with a video that’s in direct conversation with her last mega-hit.
As she did with the video for “Hello,” Adele teamed up with French-Canadian director Xavier Dolan for the “Easy On Me” visuals — and the story speaks directly to the arc of that earlier video, right down to the singer not being able to get phone reception at the beginning. (“Oh for god’s sake,” she says, glaring through giant sunglasses at her iPhone. “There we go again.” At least she’s ditched the flip phone.)
But this time, instead of arriving at a big country house — the kind featured in not only the “Hello” clip but also the iconic earlier video for “Rolling In The Deep” — she’s farewelling it and hitting the road.
As she drives, she locks eyes with a joyous just-married couple sailing past in a convertible (since her last album, 2015’s 25, she divorced the father of her son who turns 9 in a few days), passes chattering young people on a road trip, and pages of sheet music fly out the window of her car. Halfway through, the cinematic black-and-white film bursts into saturated colour, in an unsubtle visual metaphor for whatever you need it to be right now.
It’s (deliberately) not a wind-machine belter like “Hello,” but a forgiving, self-aware, and deceptively fragile anthem for re-emerging into the world after dealing with some real shit. Trust Adele to give us a soundtrack for that, too.
30 is out on Nov. 19.