Current Events > C/D: Take it Easy On Me is Adele's best song/single

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C

All of her singles before this sound like atonal belting to me. That's not to say she doesn't have talent or that her music is unworthy of critical acclaim, just that all of her music has struck me with how simple, stripped back and ultimately repetitive it is. And this is only exacerbated by how many times I've had to listen to her music in the wild.

Somebody Like You has the same plonking piano chords running through the entire song, more skilled than Love Song by Sara Bareilles for example but noticeable and repetitive enough to really get on my nerves and stay there. And the chorus wears out its welcome super fast, too - It's like Somebody You Loved by Lewis Capaldi, where by the last time he goes "I was getting kind of used to being someone you loved" it's just like - okay, I get it, but this just isn't as raw and emotional the third time it just kinda gets on my nerves.

I kind of love when songs fuck with the final chorus to make it stand out, especially when the song is meant to be this emotional thing and they're going for a big finish, an emotional climax - Piece by Piece is one example, as hit and miss as the song itself can be I at least appreciate what the last chorus does.

Set Fire to the Rain has a very melodramatic backing track, but the tone of the chorus is so one-note and boring to listen to - at least for me. Rolling in the Deep is a stomp-clap song, so is Rumor Has It. The former has a chorus comprised of atonal belting - it's controlled and intentional, I'm sure it's skillful, but I genuinely never liked it because it's just a controlled wail that doesn't age well listen after listen after listen - i.e. the way her music is overplayed on the radio. The latter relies on a sense of swagger, but again, I don't get much of a tune. It's regimented, it has structure, but the lack of a tune bores me to tears.

Skyfall is fine, I get that Adele is going for that classy James Bond vibe, but the chorus is boring. A lot of my hangups about Adele are in the chorus, it's often very one-note and shows off an impressive facet of her singing that isn't very pleasant to listen to repeatedly. Skyfall is better in that regard, going for more of a low melodic sort of thing, though again I don't like having to sit through a very piecemeal sort of chorus.

Hello, once again, doesn't have the sort of tune or melody I like in my music. It's very low and dreary, which I can appreciate in the verses, but the chorus is another loud, controlled belting that I got so fucking sick of listening to so fucking quickly.

Her other single off this new album reminds me of her older stuff. I'm not too hot on it. But Take it Easy On Me is easily her most lavishly arranged, melodic and tuneful song - and even though I've been hearing it almost daily since December, I still fucking love it.

First of all, the piano melody that starts the song and sets the structure of the song is great. It's interesting, it's got a lot of character and I can feel the tone it's going for. The verses are pretty standard Adele fare, though I'm sure there's a lot of context there that I'm missing through the tinny radio speakers I hear it through at work.

But it's the chorus that impresses me. Because yeah, she winds backs and belts, but she hits a falsetto and winds it back down into this soulful, pleading statement. It's genuinely emotional - I didn't get emotion from Rolling in the Deep or Skyfall, and whatever emotion I gleaned from Someone like You and Hello is hampered by the fact that it feels more like a platitude than a statement. Like "I thought you were bae, turns out you were just fam". Hello from the other side, never mind I'll find somebody like you. And it always amounts to a single, atonal yell that gets lauded as this skillful, masterful expression of raw emotion, but feels like someone hammering a star picket into my skull 500 listens later.

Maybe there's a point there, but it doesn't help that a lot of her singles are these one-sided conversations - maybe that's what I'm picking up on that makes her music so frustrating to listen to over and over again. It's always saying the same thing.

But Take it Easy On Me doesn't just sound like a two-sided conversation - the part that I would typically describe as "belting" has a peaked pitch, but the entire time she's singing through that part of the song, her voice fits a more complex melody and she continues with this very well-crafted and emotional melody as she winds down out of it. There's more to chew on in her singing "But please" in Take it Easy On Me than there is in "We could have had it all, rolling in the deep" in the eponymous song - and Take it Easy On Me doesn't peak at those two words, it continues along a very emotional, pretty and well-produced melody and piano accompaniment. It's a skillful and emotional song built on a rock-solid base and noticeably fantastic production, and its quality shines through.

Take it Easy On Me is her most skillful single, hands down. The song sounds fucking fantastic. I've always been burned by Adele and the constant overplay that her songs go through, but again - after a lifetime of hitting Adele burnout after like a month of overplay, I still adore this song months after I first heard it. The other new single? Don't really like it. Take it Easy On Me is her best song, hands fucking down.

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Too long; did not read.

You use the word atonal a lot but I don't think you know what it means

also this is now a copy pasta

Turtlebread posted...

You use the word atonal a lot but I don't think you know what it means

also this is now a copy pasta

Probably. I don't know how else to describe it - I guess what I would say is that a lot of her singles revolve around that big note, but it's this one loud, monolithic wall of sound in a song that's already stuck in a sort of rut, and by committing to the big yell her choruses tend to stay stuck in a limited sort of range.

I dunno if any of what I said makes sense, I just think after years of songs that make me want to bash my own face in with a brick she made a song that I actually like a lot, even after months of radio play. That's never happened with her music before.

I have a similar disposition towards Tik Tok by Kesha - it's the same bland, repetitive structure the whole way through, and it sounds flat and annoying. We R Who We R, Your Love is my Drug and Timber? I like them all. Can't stomach Tik Tok in the same way I can't stomach most of Adele's music. I'm not enough of a music guy to describe it, which is why I used "atonal" incorrectly so many times, but there's something repetitive and annoying about her music that makes listening to it like pulling teeth for me. But Take it Easy On Me is a fantastic song.