She’s been gone for six years, and on October 14, 2021, with her first single back, she broke the record for the most streamed song in a day on Spotify.
Almost six years have passed since Adele’s last album, 25, which has many of her biggest hits on it such as the songs Hello, Send My Love (To Your New Lover), and Water Under the Bridge. Adele has always taken a slower route compared to the common timeline of pop artists, 2 years between albums, instead she had a five year gap between her albums 21 and 25. It seems like that wouldn’t be true due to the names of the Albums, but she released 21 when she was twenty two, and released 25 when she was twenty seven.
“Everyone thinks I just disappeared, and I didn’t, I just went back to real life,” commented Adele in a interview with The New York Times on her gap between 21 and 25.
Adele’s most recent single, Easy On Me, goes into the pain of her most recent divorce and so has her upcoming album, which Adele dropped November 19th of this year.
Although we didn’t get any new music from Adele until recently, she didn’t completely vanish from the public eye. Little over a year ago she had her second appearance on SNL, but this time not as a musical guest. Adele hosted SNL on October 24, 2020, reminding us all how much we love her. In her SNL monologue she started by discussing her history of cursing when she’s nervous, and continues on to talk about her recent weight loss and why she isn’t also being the musical guest.
Even though Adele didn't exactly come to sing, she sang parts of her biggest hits such as When We Were Young and Rolling In The Deep in the SNL sketch, The Bachelor. In this sketch Adele is on ABC’s The Bachelor and consistently bursts into some of her classic heartfelt songs, which leads to the comical annoyance of the other contestants.
Since 25 was released the music industry has changed immensely. A major change is livestream performances, which have grown to a great extent over the past year or two, and so has airing music in animated shows or video games. Both of these ideas can grow to be quite costly though. Dua Lipa’s live stream, featuring Elton John and Miley Cyrus, on Thanksgiving of 2020 grew to cost 1.5 million dollars to create. According to RollingStone, “Covid-19 turned live streaming, once an idea that was widely balked at and discarded as a cheap thrill, into the fastest-growing ecosystem in music.” Not only has streaming grown in popularity, but vinyl sales have greatly increased in the past year. Albums such as Taylor Swift’s Evermore and Sour by Olivia Rodrigo, have seen a huge growth in vinyl sales. Most likely leading to the option of pre-order albums in vinyl, such as 30.
Although many fans suspected that she would release another album soon, she confirmed the suspicion on October 6, 2021 in her first Instagram Live, and set the internet ablaze. Most recently, the tracklist for 30 was released featuring songs such as the Easy On Me single, and I Drink Wine. The tracklist dropped on Target’s website under the description of the Target Exclusive Adele 30 album CD.
It has been a long and impatient six years of waiting for another Adele album, but if Easy On Me is anything like what 30 will be, six years was worth the wait.