The heartbreaking songs of Adele’s 2011 pop masterpiece 21 proved she couldn’t save her broken relationship.
Instead, she nearly saved the music industry when 21 became the world’s best-selling album of the year. It topped the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks, longer than any female solo artist in history. While the music industry struggled to adapt to the streaming age, Adele released an elegant, swirling collection of global breakup songs.
On 21, Adele avoids the Swiftian details. Her songwriting aims for the universal. Still, her despair and rage are so palpable that the platitudes don’t consume the songs. They became instant standards of sorrow. Think of the album as containing chapters of grief—the novel you can’t put down. And music fans didn’t put it down. They kept listening and weeping with her.
Adele is the sieve through which her fans filter their own romantic miseries. She said she wrote the lyrics to 21 while drinking wine and chain-smoking. Honesty poured into the songs and the album’s overarching theme is how Adele expects to be loved. It’s an album of ideals. It’s absolute. Its multiple facades reveal the towering force of Adele at age 21.
Like many great albums, 21 works on a road trip or a late-night hang, together or alone. So cozy up to four must-hear songs from Adele’s gigantic 21.
“Turning Tables“
Adele wrote “Turning Tables” with OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder. The piano ballad stemmed from an argument between Adele and her ex, which began the end of their relationship. They were eating at a restaurant in New York, one with revolving tables, and they started arguing and eventually stormed out into the street to continue the fight outside. There’s a cyclical piano riff that sounds unresolved. But there’s also a feeling of spiraling chaos—the descent of a doomed romance. Her voice beautifully lifts above the fray. This is the chapter where Adele has had enough.
“Set Fire to the Rain“
Much of 21 is autobiographical. “Set Fire to the Rain” borrows from James Taylor’s signature song, and recycles the metaphor to describe the heartbreak from a failed romance. Adele sings about letting herself fall in love, only to fall victim to another disappointing lover. Though she tries to salvage the relationship, she chooses to save herself and escape while the romance goes up in flames. Think of this as Adele’s survival chapter. When everything’s boiling all at once, sometimes the best thing to do is let it burn and start over.
“Rolling in the Deep“
Amy Winehouse ushered in the Zeitgeist for nostalgic female singers with soulful voices. Adele’s 21 doesn’t sound like the vintage time stamp of Back to Black, but she does echo Winehouse’s raspy, raw, and emotive crooning. However, Adele delivered a more accessible and global version of Winehouse’s Brit soul. You can hear echoes of the ’60s girl groups that shaped Winehouse, but Adele also pulled from country and Delta blues music. “Rolling in the Deep” was a colossal hit. On it, Adele leaves her bum lover and uses a stomping gospel groove to create a liberating anthem. Chapter synopsis: Adele rages.
“Someone Like You“
If you come across someone who’s never heard Adele, and you only have one song to play for them, “Someone Like You” is that song. It’s everything one wants from an Adele track. Piano ballad—check. Heartbreak—check. A despairing, world-class vocal to make you cry and a starry melody to lift you past the sorrow—check.
Very few pop singers can get by with only a piano accompaniment. But Adele has made the piano ballad a new kind of art. She’s a genre herself. Adele once said she owed most of her career to Amy Winehouse. But Adele uniquely reaches into the depths of the soul, to where Etta James existed. She sings in a glittering and gritty operatic style that’s soul and jazz and pop. “Someone Like You” is a stirring masterpiece. It’s agonizing and a reminder that love isn’t guaranteed. Sometimes it hurts instead.
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