New Music Friday: Growing Up With Adele On 25
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Hopefully, we all mature and evolve with age. As you look back, chances are you are not the same person you were at nineteen or twenty-one. The experiences we have have a tendency to refine us as time goes by.
The same is often true of music.
Ragged artists get polished with the sheen of success and new opportunities. There's often a glossy finish applied to raw talent as careers progress and advance. Maybe it's because Adele stamps an age on each album that it is so glaringly obvious how true this is with her.
On her debut 19, Adele was draped in folk jazz, a smoky backroom styling that was playful with an occasional flourish. With 21, she matured into a soulful blues singer – bouncing between rollicking stompers like "Rumor Has It" and emotional piano power ballads like "Someone Like You". It struck a balance that showcased her gigantic voice and made her one of the biggest singers in the world.
Now today, we have 25 where Adele has once again morphed into something different. The singer has stepped out of the soulful blues spotlight and into something far more serious. Gone are the swaying kiss-offs to heartbreak, replaced by a more pop gospel sound. This is the church of Adele where she leads an orchestra of strings, choirs, and sleek chamber pop piano in a lustrous adult manner. The result is that 25 is less fun than 21, but more powerful.
It makes sense really. Weren't we all more fun at 21 and more equipped and responsible at 25? The same holds true for the music of Adele.
Her most exuberant moment on 25 comes right after the already-massive album opener "Hello". "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" finds Adele bouncing along a hiccupping guitar and clapping beat. It's the closest she comes to the lighter moments of 21.
25 is at its most grand with "When We Were Young". It's the singers Fantasia moment – backing singers and a wall of studio musicians crash around Adele as she soars through the chorus. It's a big song - one of those "Bridge Over Troubled Water" types that you can just feel will be around forever.
The spot where Adele shines the brightest though on 25, and where all the maturity of age plays to her favor is when it's just her. That voice is amazing – big and venerable all at the same time – as they send everybody out of the studio and have her alone with one guitar or one piano. There's a pair of songs near the conclusion of the album that show why Adele is such an important singer. "A Million Years" is soul-baring and hauntingly sparse as she sings along with the slow strumming of a guitar. It's that "making up with myself" sentiment that she told us about when she first emerged from her musical hibernation. It's followed by "All I Ask", a legend-cementing piano ballad that shows Adele's massive voice off in a Whitney kind of way.
25 is a grown up record way beyond the age attached to it. Unfortunately for some that comes with less "play time" and foot-tapping, but luckily it still shows Adele in her rightful place – as the biggest voice in music.