"River Lea" is a song recorded by English singer-songwriter

Adele Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (, ; born 5 May 1988), professionally known by the mononym Adele, is an English singer and songwriter. After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a rec ...

for her third studio album '' 25'' (2015). The song was written by

Adele Adkins Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (, ; born 5 May 1988), professionally known by the mononym Adele, is an English singer and songwriter. After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a reco ...

and Brian Burton, while production of the song was provided by Burton under his pseudonym Danger Mouse. Lyrically, the track is partly about the River Lea in London. Musically, the song is a

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...

song with a ghostly feel. "River Lea" received positive reviews from critics, with ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' calling it "one of the most striking tracks" on ''25'' and spent 32 weeks at #1 on gospel chart song in US. The song peaked at number 5 on the Finland Chart and number 80 on the France Chart. It debuted at number 97 on the

Official German Charts The GfK Entertainment charts are the official music charts in Germany and are gathered and published by GfK Entertainment (formerly Media Control and Media Control GfK International), a subsidiary of GfK, on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindust ...

Composition

"River Lea" is a biographical song with a "ghostly feel." It is partly about the River Lea, a

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

tributary to the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

. It is a marshy river, and its significance to Adele is that it is located near her birthplace. Adele says, "A lot of my life was spent walking alongside the River Lea to go and get somewhere else." Adele also describes how the song is about how she has changed from the time she lived in the area around the river. There is a lot of guilt wrapped up in the song and Adele "cuts off the ends of her sentences as if she does not want to say what she is saying." ''

SPIN magazine ''Spin'' (stylized in all caps) is an American music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione, Jr. Now owned by Next Management Partners, the magazine is an online publication since it stopped issuing a print edition in 2012. Histor ...

'' writes that she takes the name of the river itself and "warps the phrase into an amorphous being." The song is in the genre of gospel music. The music behind the lyrics contains "choirlike keyboard chords created from her own

sampled Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of so ...

voice." "River Lea" is written in the key of

E minor E minor is a minor scale based on E, consisting of the pitches E, F, G, A, B, C, and D. Its key signature has one sharp. Its relative major is G major and its parallel major is E major. The E natural minor scale is: : Changes needed ...

with a

tempo In musical terminology, tempo ( Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (ofte ...

of 83 beats per minute. The song follows a chord progression of CDEmA, and Adele's vocals span from E₃ to B₄.

Charts

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:River Lea (song) 2015 songs Adele songs Gospel songs Song recordings produced by Danger Mouse (musician) Songs about London Songs about rivers Songs written by Adele Songs written by Danger Mouse (musician)