As trivial as Adele's description of her album being about "divorce babe, divorce", 'Easy On Me' is a heartfelt singly that's quintessentially Adele (for better and for worse).
After a six-year hiatus and a slow-burn PR campaign, Adele is finally back with her first single from her upcoming album, 30. In typical Adele fashion, ‘Easy On Me’ is a slow-burning ballad, brimming with heartbreak and emotion. It’s also a little boring, even as its lyrics try to navigate one of the many painful moments of Adele’s divorce.
Opening with just the piano, you can already tell that Adele reaches for the same pull-at-the-heartstrings vibe that 21‘s ‘Someone Like You’ or 25‘s ‘Hello’ went for. It’s chord-heavy, relatively slow, and at the perfect volume to frame Adele’s voice. When Adele starts singing, it’s beautiful, angelic almost, yet you can’t help but wonder if you haven’t heard this same format from the singer before. While the song adds a little drumbeat from its second verse onwards, it never goes as far as the song seems to push for, halted by an overindulgence in simplicity. It’s a shame; there is a real poignancy in Adele’s lyric writing as she begs her son and ex-husband to go ‘easy on me’ as she grapples with how she ‘changed who I was to put you both first’ when she finds herself ‘drowning in this silence’.
‘Easy On Me’ feels a little too safe for Adele, but that doesn’t halt my anticipation for 30. While Adele surely knows how to write a ballad, I’ve always come to learn it’s her second single that always makes more waves than her first (so here’s hoping for that again).
‘Easy On Me’ is out now via Melted Stone / Columbia. Watch the video here:
