25 (Adele album)

''25'' is the third studio album by the English singer-songwriter Adele, released on 20 November 2015 by XL Recordings and Columbia Records. The album is titled as a reflection of her life and frame of mind at 25 years old and is termed a "make-up record". Its lyrical content features themes of Adele "yearning for her old self, her nostalgia", and "melancholia about the passage of time" according to an interview with the singer by ''Rolling Stone'', as well as themes of motherhood, new love, and regret.

In contrast to Adele's previous works, the production of ''25'' incorporated the use of electronic elements and creative rhythmic patterns, with elements of 1980s R&B and organs. Four singles were released to promote the album, with " Hello" becoming an international number one song and the fastest selling digital single in the US, with over a million copies sold within a week of its release, " Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" charted within the top 10 and " When We Were Young" and " Water Under the Bridge" charted within the top 20 across Europe and North America.

''25'' received generally positive reviews from music critics, who commended its production and Adele's vocal performance. ''25'' became a massive commercial success, debuting at number one in 32 countries and breaking first-week sales records in multiple countries, including the UK and US. In the US, the album sold over 3.38 million copies in its first week of sales, marking the largest single-week sales for an album since Luminate Data began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991. ''25'' was the world's best-selling album of the year for 2015, with 17.4 million copies sold within the year, and has gone on to sell over 23.3 million copies worldwide, making it the fourth-best selling album of the 21st century, the second-best selling album of the 2010s (behind her own '' 21''), and one of the best-selling albums of all-time. Following ''21'', it was certified Diamond by the RIAA, making Adele the only artist of the 2010s to achieve this certification with two albums.

Credited for impacting the music industry by encouraging a renewed interest in buying physical releases rather than downloading or streaming and much like ''21'', for saving the dwindling sales of the global music industry, ''25'' won the 2016 Brit Award for British Album of the Year, and the 2017 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. To promote the album, Adele embarked on her third worldwide concert tour, Adele Live 2016. It started on 29 February 2016 and ended on 30 June 2017. The concert broke numerous attendance records across the globe and grossed $278.4 million.

Background

Following the release of '' 21'' (2011), Adele was considering quitting music. However, in early 2012 she announced she was simply taking a hiatus from music to "take time and live a little bit".Kaufman, Gil (3 April 2012
"Adele To Release New Single This Year"
MTV. Retrieved 19 October 2012 Her hiatus from music came to an end after the birth of her first child in October 2012, with Adele stating her son inspired her to start recording music again for him to "know what I do". Before the album's recording came under way, Adele made a conscious decision not to try and create another ''21'' and would not make another "heartbreak record".

Prior to the album's release, ''25'' was listed as one of the most anticipated albums of 2015. '' Billboard'', '' Fuse'', ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' and numerous others placed the album at number one on their most anticipated list, with the latter stating "if Adele releases her third album in 2015, she could dominate the year." Prior to the album's official announcement, music journalists and fans speculated that the album would be titled ''25'' continuing the age theme from Adele's previous releases '' 19'' and ''21''. On the eve of her 26th birthday in May 2014, Adele posted a message via her Twitter account which prompted media discussion about her next album. The message, "Bye bye 25 ... See you again later in the year", was interpreted by outlets including ''Billboard'' and Capital FM as meaning that her next album would be titled ''25'' and released later in the year.

Writing and recording

Early sessions and writer's block

On 10 February 2013, Adele confirmed that she was in the very early stages of her third album and was having meetings while staying in Los Angeles for the 85th Academy Awards. Initially recording sessions for ''25'' were unsuccessful, in which Adele suffered from writer's block. Adele rescheduled the album's recording stating she did not feel "ready", but returned to the studio when her son was eighteen months old, which inspired her to write an album about motherhood. In an interview on BBC One, it was revealed that a whole album about being a mother was written and scrapped because she thought the material was "too boring".

Adele stated that the album took a long time to write, saying she did not think the album was ever going to be finished. During the initial recording Adele ran out of ideas and lost the ability to write songs, but her team encouraged her to go back to the drawing board and keep writing. After what seemed like a very arduous process to the singer, who feared she may have lost the inspiration for her writing, the material that eventually became ''25'' manifested. Adele attempted to write ''25'' numerous times, but struggled; after taking time off due to motherhood Adele returned to the studio but stated she was not ready to start writing. She then went on to take more time off, repeating this process "a couple of times".

In 2013, Adele began recording once again, contacting friend and producer Kid Harpoon. Adele and Harpoon went to his recording studio, however the session was unproductive with Adele saying: "I don't know why I wasn't ready, I just couldn't access myself."
A few months passed and Adele travelled to New York to begin working with long time collaborator Ryan Tedder, but the sessions with Tedder were also unfruitful. However, Adele did use one of the songs from the sessions entitled "Remedy", which was written about her best friend, her grandparents, her boyfriend, and her son, and was the easiest song on the album for her to write. Adele was excited by the song and believed she was finally creating music that she liked and felt confident about. After recording the song along with others she flew producer Rick Rubin to the studio who was displeased with the songs that she had written, and encouraged Adele to go back to the "drawing board".
Rubin described the songs as having no depth and stated to Adele;

Breakthrough sessions

Adele continued to suffer with writer's block, until she met with producer Greg Kurstin. During the meeting with Kurstin, Adele had a breakthrough: "It all poured right out of me." "Hello" was written by Adele and Kurstin and produced by the latter, who also played bass, guitar, piano and keyboards, with Adele being credited as a drummer. The song was written in Chiswick, London, something not normally done by Adele, who said she likes to write her music at home. The writing process for the song was slow, taking six months to complete. Initially Adele and Kurstin started writing the first verse; finishing half of the song, six months later Adele contacted Kurstin to finish the song with her, with Kurstin stating he was not sure "if Adele was ever going to come back and finish it."
The main inspiration behind the record came from her motherhood, as well as singer-songwriter Madonna's 1998 studio album, '' Ray of Light'', and its song " Frozen". Although Adele clarified that she "wasn't exposed to Madonna's catalog earlier" in life, she loved Madonna's electronic musical foray after hearing it. "I believe everything she says on it. Some of the songs on it are an ode to her first kid, and I needed that to challenge me." Along with ''Ray of Light'', Adele also listened to musician Moby's fifth studio album, '' Play''.

You know what I found so amazing about 'Ray of Light'' ... That's the record Madonna wrote after having her first child, and for me, it's her best. I was so all over the place after having a child, just because my chemicals were just hitting the fucking roof and shit like that ... I was just drifting away, and I couldn't find that many examples for myself where I was like, 'Fuck, they truly came back to themselves,' until someone was like, 'Well, obviously, ''Ray of Light''.'

During the album's recording Adele travelled to Los Angeles to give the recording sessions "one last push". Adele spent two months in Los Angeles, and was determined to move forward with the album. During the sessions in Los Angeles she also wrote " When We Were Young" alongside Tobias Jesso Jr., the track was written at a rented house where Adele used Philip Glass' piano. Adele also worked with singer-songwriter Bruno Mars, initially the pair had attempted to create an uptempo song, however they created a "dramatic ballad" entitled " All I Ask".

After unfruitful sessions with Tedder, the pair went to lunch where Adele heard Taylor Swift's single " I Knew You Were Trouble". Tedder informed Adele that the song was produced by Max Martin, and sent her clips of his work. Shortly after this, Adele began work on the track " Send My Love (To Your New Lover)", reworking a skeleton of a song she had written when she was thirteen years old after being inspired by the release of '' Frank'' by Amy Winehouse. Kurstin also co-wrote and produced the song "Million Years Ago". The song was not set to be included on the record, but was added three days prior to the album's mixing at Electric Lady Studios in New York.

Scrapped tracks

Adele co-wrote a song called " Alive" with Jesso and Sia. Initially written for ''25'' along with "Bird Set Free" and another track, Adele decided not to include any of the songs on the album. Following Adele's decision, Sia asked her permission to send the track to Rihanna, which Adele agreed to as long as her vocals were taken off the record, stating: "I don't want my vocal floating around out there on a demo." Sia eventually recorded it herself for her seventh studio album ''This Is Acting''.
"Bird Set Free" was recorded by Adele, but she decided not to include it due to it being too similar to Sia's work; it too was subsequently included on ''This Is Acting''.

Before beginning work on the album, Adele met with Phil Collins to discuss a collaboration. "I had this song in mind," she told ''Rolling Stone'', "and I can't remember if I gave him a copy of the song or if I gave him a chorus or something, and then I just chickened out of everything." "She's a slippery little fish..." Collins remarked subsequently. "She got hold of me and asked if I would write with her. She gave me a piece of music to finish and at first I didn't know if I'd failed the audition as I didn't hear from her. Then she said, 'No, no: I'm moving house and the baby's taking up a lot of my time. I'm not actually doing anything at the moment.' And now I've heard there's a ''29'' iccoming out. I'm not on it, I know that."

Musical style and themes

Consisting of eleven tracks, Adele aimed to depart from the "young-fogey" sound of her second album ''21'' and added synths and drum pads to modernize ''25''s musical style. The album's production incorporated the use of electronic elements and creative rhythmic patterns, unlike its predecessor, with elements of 1980s R&B and organs. Described as a collection of "panoramic ballads and prettily executed detours", Leah Greenblatt of ''Entertainment Weekly'' noted the album's "stately production" characterizing it as being built over minor-key melancholy, stylistic flourishes and simplicity. Leonie Cooper of the ''NME'' summed the album's production up as changing from "moody balladeering to smoky jazz bar grooves" while a reviewer from ''Us Weekly'' stated the album was built upon piano ballads, R&B grooves, minimalistic arrangements, gospel, blues and acoustic guitars.

Adele's vocals on ''25'' were described as being capable of conveying emotion.
Her vocals were noted by Samantha O'Connor of ''The 405'' as ranging from "thunderous roars and rib-cracking falsettos over large dramatic piano swells to fuzzy, warm lower-register rumblings", and were characterised as having a raw delivery, with minimal engineering, leaving "her vocal idiosyncrasies to crackle, croak and coo, bringing more depth" to the album.
Bruce Handy of '' Vanity Fair'' stated that Adele's throat surgery had not impacted her voice, continuing to say her voice still contained character and power: "brassy yet husky, smoky yet clarion, she still sounds like the result of a genetic experiment fusing Amy Winehouse's vocal chords with Céline Dion's lungs, or even Tom Jones'."

Described by Adele as a "make-up album", she attempted to move away from the theme of break-ups that dominated ''21''s lyrical content. Adele stated that ''25''s lyrics focuses on themes of her "trying to clear out the past," and moving on.
She continued to say that the album's lyrics are a reflection of the frame of mind she was in during that age, describing the time as a "turning point" where she was in the centre of adolescence and adulthood and the start of a time where she would "go into becoming who I'm going to be forever without a removal van full of my old junk." Lyrically, the album touches upon various themes including the singers fear of getting older, her childhood, regrets, longing for her family, nostalgia and her role as a mother. Mark Savage of the BBC, noted the album's themes were a departure from the anger and heartbroken themes that dominated ''21'', stating that the lyrics were "reflective" allowing the singer "to re-examine her past relationships". Savage continued to state that songs such as " When We Were Young" introduce the album's key theme of Adele's "uneasy acceptance of adulthood." The album is focused at a broad popular music appeal, where her former releases, were made with a concoction of "gospel, R&B, jazz, ndfolk" styles, elements, and audiences in mind.

Songs

''25'' opens with " Hello", a piano ballad that borrows heavily from soul music. During the chorus Adele is heard singing the lines over layers of backing vocals, piano and drums which were described by the ''Telegraph'' as leaning "towards a very luscious wall of sound". The track also contains drums which Adele was credited for providing. Lyrically, the track focuses on themes of nostalgia and regret and plays out like a conversation. The follow-up, " Send My Love (To Your New Lover)", has been compared to the work of singer Taylor Swift due to its "upbeat, poppy" sound. Adele describes it as a "happy you're gone" song, which was inspired by an ex-boyfriend.

The drum-filled folk song "I Miss You" has been described as "explicitly seductive" due to the lyrics: "Bring the floor up to my knees/Let me fall into your gravity/And kiss me back to life to see/Your body standing over me." " When We Were Young", another piano-led ballad, is "a reflective serenade about treasuring the moments you will look back on in years to come", while the ballad "Remedy", was written about Adele's best friend, her grandparents, her boyfriend, and her son.
" Water Under the Bridge" was created by r&b Mega Croner / producer / songwriter Don P during private sessions held in Adeles Kingsington town house and Don Ps Yelm Property, the song is a mid-tempo pop song, featuring an electro-drum beat and a tropical, trip hop riff, with Adele proclaiming to her lover "If you're gonna let me down, let me down gently/Don't pretend that you don't want me/Our love ain't water under the bridge". The gospel-tinged "River Lea" talks about the singer growing up in Tottenham, London, England, Adele sings about The Lea, a river in London. During the song Adele speaks of how the river's polluted waters have seeped into her blood causing her relationship failures. " Love in the Dark" is a torch ballad.

"Million Years Ago", an acoustic tune accompanied only by guitar, finds the singer pining "for the normality of her not-so-distant childhood. Entwined with Middle Eastern twists of background hums that suggest Madonna's ' Frozen'".
The song's lyrics touch upon themes of fame, and how it "frightens", the song's lyrics talk about how fame has personally affected her and everyone around her, singing about how she misses the air, her mother, and her friends, but her "life is flashing by and all I can do is watch and cry."
In the final piano ballad "All I Ask", "Adele addresses a lover on what she knows will be their final night, processing the end of an affair in what feels like slow motion." ''25'' closes with "Sweetest Devotion", an "uplifting" number written as a tribute to her son.

Release and promotion

A release date for ''25'' was first suggested in early August 2014, when Paul Moss suggested that an album would be released in 2014 or 2015. However, accounts filed by Adele's label XL Recordings in October 2014 ruled out the possibility of a 2014 release. In August 2015, '' Billboard'' reported that Adele's label had intentions of releasing her third studio album sometime in November 2015. In October 2015, the album was rumoured to be released on 20 November 2015, after which numerous journalists speculated that other musicians had brought forward their albums to avoid chart competition with her, with artists such as One Direction, Justin Bieber, Fleur East, and 5 Seconds of Summer releasing their albums before Adele's, so that their sales and chart placements would not be affected. The fourth quarter was also set to have releases from Rihanna, Kanye West, and Coldplay, and all except Coldplay backed out from coinciding with the release of Adele's album.

On 18 October, a 30-second clip of " Hello" was shown on UK television during a commercial break on ''The X Factor''. It teased a new song from Adele after three years, with viewers hearing her singing the first verse of "Hello" with its lyrics appearing on a black screen. Three days later, Adele released a letter to her fans through social media addressing the album, in which she confirmed that the album would be titled ''25''. Adele stated that the title is a reflection on her age and the frame of mind she was in during that age, describing the time as a "turning point" where she was in the centre of adolescence and adulthood and the start of a time where she would "go into becoming who I'm going to be forever without a removal van full of my old junk." She added: "My last record was a break-up record and if I had to label this one I would call it a make-up record. I'm making up with myself. I'm making up for lost time." Adele confirmed the next day ''25'' would be released on 20 November 2015, and revealed its cover simultaneously on her social media.

On 27 October, BBC One announced plans for a one-hour television special presented by Graham Norton in which he would talk to Adele about her new album. '' Adele at the BBC'' was recorded before a live audience on 2 November and transmitted on BBC One on 20 November, coinciding with the album's release. A short extract of the programme was previewed during an edition of BBC One's ''The One Show'' aired on 5 November; it shows Adele performing "Hello" and chatting to Norton. On 27 October it was also announced that the singer would make an appearance on the US entertainment series ''Saturday Night Live'' on 21 November. On 30 October, Adele confirmed through her Facebook page that she would be performing a one-night-only concert titled '' Adele Live in New York City'' at the Radio City Music Hall on 17 November. Subsequently, NBC confirmed they would air the concert special on 14 December.

On 19 November 2015, ''The New York Times'' reported that the album will not be released on streaming services, such as Spotify and Apple Music. It was later announced that ''25'' would be made available through streaming services from 24 June 2016. Also in November, Adele appeared on the NRJ Awards, NPR, and ''The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon''.

In January 2016, she sang some of her greatest hits so far during her carpool karaoke video on '' The Late Late Show with James Corden''. The following month, Adele performed at the 58th Grammy Awards, the 2016 Brit Awards, and ''The Ellen DeGeneres Show''. Adele also conducted interviews with and appeared on the covers of ''Time'', '' Vanity Fair'', '' Vogue'', '' i-D'', ''The Observer'', and ''Rolling Stone''. Adele performed "Hello" again at the 59th Grammy Awards in 2017.

Singles

On 23 October 2015, " Hello" was released as the album's lead single and was made available for purchase and streaming, with its music video released on the same day. It compiled over 100 million views on YouTube within 5 days. It is the second-fastest video to hit 100 million YouTube views ever and the fastest to reach 100 million on Vevo previously held by "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus back in 2013. 87 days after its release "Hello" had received a billion YouTube views, beating Psy's "Gangnam Style", which had accumulated the same number of views over 158 days. The song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart on 30 October, with a combined first week sales of 330,000 copies. The figure was the largest opening week sales for a single since James Arthur's " Impossible", which achieved a volume of 490,000 sales in 2012. The song sold 1,112,000 digital downloads and 61.2 million streams in its first week, resulting in "Hello" debuting at number one on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 (becoming Adele's fourth number-one single in the United States) on the issue dated 14 November 2015. By the end of 2015, it had sold 12.3 million units globally and was the year's 7th best-selling single.

On 14 December 2015, '' Billboard'' reported that " When We Were Young" is scheduled as the second single from ''25''. The song had already charted at number 29 on the UK Single Chart and number 22 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, and sold 150,000 digital copies in the United States. The song was released on 22 January 2016, eventually peaking at number 14 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100.

iHeartRadio reported on 27 April 2016 that " Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" had been selected as the album's third single and that it would be serviced to radio stations on 17 May 2016. The song peaked at No. 8 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in the United States, No. 5 in the UK and No. 10 in Canada.

On 4 November 2016, " Water Under the Bridge" was released as the fourth single from the album. The single peaked at No. 26 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in the United States, No. 39 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 37 on the Canadian Hot 100.

Touring

Adele embarked on her third concert tour titled Adele Live 2016, which ran from February to November 2016. The first leg started in Belfast on 29 February 2016 in the SSE Arena before moving throughout mainland Europe and concluding in Antwerp at Sportpaleis on 15 June 2016. The second leg began on 5 July at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota and continues throughout the United States and Canada with multiple dates at each venue. The tour concluded on 2 July 2017 in London, UK. Demand for the tour was extremely high and all shows sold out within minutes of going on sale. Over 500,000 fans registered at Adele.com to purchase tickets, with 57,000 tickets sold for the 12 shows that were put on sale in the UK.

Critical reception

''25'' received mostly positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 75, based on 35 reviews. Bruce Handy, writing a review for '' Vanity Fair'', regarded the music as traditional R&B and modern pop music, with songs that are mostly ballads. Reviewing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine comments, "Fittingly, ''25'' also plays better over the long haul, its march of slow songs steadily revealing subtle emotional or musical distinctions", where "all 11 songs are ... a piece ... fshaded melancholy gaining most of their power through performance", and arguing that the "cohesive sound only accentuates how Adele has definitively claimed this arena of dignified heartbreak as her own".

Neil McCormick from ''The Daily Telegraph'' stated that the album covered the same "musical and emotional terrain" as ''21'' and continued to call it an "equal of its predecessor." Jon Dolan of ''Rolling Stone'' commented that the album's "nostalgic mood is the perfect fit for an artist who reaches back decades for her influences, even as her all-or-nothing urgency feels utterly modern" and also praising her "incredible phrasing – the way she can infuse any line with nuance and power", which he argued served as "more proof that she's among the greatest interpreters of romantic lyrics". Leah Greenblatt of ''Entertainment Weekly'' called it "a record that feels both new and familiar—a beautiful if safe collection of panoramic ballads and prettily executed detours". '' Billboard'' praised Adele's vocal performance writing that it's "swathed in echo, sounding like she's wailing beneath the vaults of the planet's most cavernous cathedral, they hit hard." Amanda Petrusich from ''Pitchfork'' praised Adele's vocal delivery, arguing that " erinstincts as a singer remain unmatched; she is, inarguably, the greatest vocalist of her generation, an artist who instinctively understands timbre and pitch, when to let some air in".

In a less enthusiastic review for ''The Independent'', Andy Gill said the songs "River Lea" and "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" were "isolated moments of musical intrigue scattered here and there through the album", which he said gradually became "swamped by the kind of dreary piano ballads that are Adele's fall-back position". Leonie Cooper from ''NME'' felt Adele and her team of songwriters/producers did not take any risks musically, instead "following a formula that has so far resulted in 30 million album sales". Jude Rogers found the ''25'' bogged down by the emotionally weighty themes of Adele's previous records, comparing the singer to "a friend who you've helped countless times but who won't listen, who actually enjoys being in a mess, whose sparkle gets dampened – gets drowned – as a consequence".

Year end lists

''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked the album at number two on its "The 50 Best Albums of 2015" year-end list. American newspaper ''Newsday'' also ranked the album at number two on their list of 2015's best albums, UK publication ''Complex'' listed the album at number four on their list of The Best Albums of 2015 and ''Entertainment Weekly'' listed the album at number three.

Accolades

At the Brit Awards 2016, Adele was nominated for five awards, in which she won four including British Album of the Year for ''25'' and British Single of the Year for "Hello". With her wins, Adele equalling the record for most wins by an artist in one night, firstly set by Blur in 1995. At the 2016 ''Billboard'' Music Awards, the singer was nominated for nine categories, winning five, including Top Billboard 200 Album for ''25'' and Top Selling Song for "Hello". At the 2016 Juno Awards, Adele won International Album of the Year for ''25'' and Xavier Dolan won Video of the Year for "Hello". Adele received four American Music Awards nominations, including Favorite Pop/Rock Album for ''25'' and Favorite Pop/Rock Song for "Hello" at the American Music Awards of 2016 but lost to '' Purpose'' and " Love Yourself" respectively, both by Justin Bieber. Adele also won ''Attitude''s Album of the Year for ''25''. At the 59th Grammy Awards, the album won six Grammys: Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for ''25'', while "Hello" won Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance. Adele became the first artist in history to win all three general field awards in the same ceremony twice, previously winning all three categories in 2012. Also Adele was the first artist to win Album of the Year with back-to-back studio albums since Stevie Wonder took top award with three consecutive albums in the 1970s. In addition, her producer Greg Kurstin won Producer of the Year, Non-Classical.

Commercial performance

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, ''25'' debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and sold 800,307 copies in its first chart week, overtaking Oasis

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