For a lot of people, it’s not difficult to see that 2015 was probably the last “viable” year. A time of final remaining “innocence” (even though we could say that about 2019 as well) before the advent of a certain Orange One, followed by a pandemic, changed everything forever. Opened an unstoppable floodgate of chaos and confusion. In short, it was an administration well-timed for the release of Joker during that particular “president’s” term. And now, even though we have a different president from a different party, things don’t seem all that much better. Sure, there’s no white supremacist rhetoric, but that doesn’t change the fact that Planet Earth, America or otherwise, is pretty much fucked without the level of drastic change required (but that no one will implement) to avert all-out climate dystopia.
So yeah, back to 2015. It was a carefree period. Even if Adele’s dramatic tone on “Hello,” the lead single from 25, might have indicated otherwise. That’s just her tone, after all, and one that correlates quite nicely with the present time of year (something Taylor Swift—the girl who just can’t compete with Adele—understood “all too well” when she released evermore at the end of 2020). Leaves falling, depression setting in (more than usual), etc. And no one knows how to set the mood for that better than Tottenham’s finest.
Like “Easy on Me,” our first taste of 30, “Hello” was also released in October, a month that suits Adele for marking the moody seasonal shift into fall (even if seasons are nothing but a quaint thing of the past). Thus, it’s only right that, to fully complete that effect, Adele should re-team with the same director who made “Hello” such a meme-able smash—especially thanks to that flip phone—Xavier Dolan. Usually known for making movies that force ordinary audiences into a state of discomfort (see: Tom at the Farm, Mommy), Dolan can now also double as the go-to guy for giving Adele her “cottage-cozy,” normcore aesthetic in music videos. Perhaps Lana Del Rey ought to hit him up for this very purpose, especially since it feels like Adele used Kim Kardashian’s magic clock on SNL to switch bodies with her.
In video format, “Hello” is six minutes and six seconds to “Easy on Me’s” five minutes and thirty-one seconds, with the former daring to verge on totally saccharine for the sake of, evidently, later coming across as the perfect retroactive “quarantine” music video. Opting for outright black and white instead of sepia this time, Dolan opens the “Easy on Me” narrative similarly to the one in “Hello,” with the shot set up inside of the house as Adele stares out the window in the contemplative fashion reserved, these days, for waiting for a package (shakes fist at ceiling and screams, “Supply chain!”).
While she was entering the formerly abandoned space in “Hello,” she’s now abandoning the space after selling the property. Ready to move on for good. In many ways, however, “Hello” retrospectively feels like an apology that could now be directed at Adele’s erstwhile husband, Simon Konecki. Yet 30 isn’t about making apologies—unless it’s to her own son, Angelo. Which is exactly what’s at the core of the lyrics in “Easy on Me” when she pleas, “Go easy on me baby/I was still a child/Didn’t get the chance to/Feel the world around me/I had no time to choose/What I chose to do.”
What she chose to do, and what made her feel guilty as both a woman and a mother, was end things after a very short period of marriage. Which meant summarily blowing up her child’s life along with her own. As she told Vogue, in addition to admitting that being fit is generally a rich person’s gambit, “It just wasn’t right for me anymore. I didn’t want to end up like a lot of other people I knew. I wasn’t miserable miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first. But, yeah, nothing bad happened or anything like that.” Which, of course, is what made her feel all the guiltier for ending it. Because it’s always easier to break up with someone when there’s an ironclad “reason”—you know, like being smacked around or something.
Adele, however, had the presence of mind to say to herself, “It’s not bad decisions that fuck up our kids, it’s indecisions.” So she made a decision, and a definitive one. Considering her hyper-obsession with privacy, however, it couldn’t have been a juicier life choice for the “tabloids” (now gossip websites) to try to sink their teeth into. But they didn’t know who they were tangoing with in regard to the chanteuse’s ability to keep her personal life under wraps. Adele can only now admit, “I was really embarrassed. That thing of not being able to make something work. We’ve been trained as women to keep trying, even by the movies we watched when we were little. At the time it broke my heart, but I actually find it so interesting now. How we’re told to suck it up.” And yes, the one thing a woman is never supposed to say is precisely what Adele dares to via the lyrics, “I changed who I was/To put you both first/But now I give up.”
Not wanting to fully break apart her spawn’s life, she had Simon simply move into “the house opposite my house.” Perhaps that’s why the video for “Easy on Me” has such an emphasis on the act of “moving out.” Giving a nod to the “Hello” parallel by also speaking on a cell phone as she walks outside, Adele says to an unknown party on the other line, “Hi darling, you all right? Yeah I’m good, yeah. All good, all done, everything’s packed. I’m just gonna get on the road now. About to leave.” She pauses, doing her best to act like someone’s on the other line before “responding,” “Well hopefully just a couple of hours but, if I’m late go ‘head and start without me, all good.” It’s her final piece of spoken dialogue that truly pays homage to her first Dolan video as she warns, “But I will probably have bad signal. I said I probably won’t have good signal! Yes I can hear you perfectly, can you hear me? Oh for god’s sake. Here we go again.” In “Hello,” the dialogue was simply, “I’ve just got here and I think I’m losing signal already. Hello? Can you hear me now?”
After hanging up the phone in “Easy on Me,” Adele, dressed in her The Matrix-esque trench (a look that’s in direct contrast to the pastoral surroundings), approaches a beat-up truck, gets in and slips a cassette tape into the radio—this piece of technological ephemera seeming to substitute for the missing flip phone this time around. Driving down the road with her arm waving in the wind, she passes a trailer that says, “Happy Holidays” on it with a merry-making family outside, the first of a few bittersweet tableaus she’ll see on her journey (the license plate of the car tells us maybe it’s somewhere in New Hampshire?) to remind her of her own “failed” family structure. The next “sighting” is of an annoyingly beatific girl smiling at Adele as she passes by in a car with her new husband in the driver’s seat. Unsurprisingly, the car has “Just Married” regalia on the back. If one was Adele in this scenario, the best thing to do would be to pull a Michele (Lisa Kudrow) in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion and start getting a little obscene in response to this passenger’s unwanted interaction.
But no, Adele has other things on her mind. Staring back into the rearview mirror as sheet music pours out of the backseat (clearly, like everyone else, Adele has little true concern for being environmentally friendly), Dolan then somewhat abruptly cuts to Adele sitting alone in the type of room that might otherwise be deemed the perfect location for a horror movie. The sheet music continues to swirl around her before, at the three-minute, thirty-eight second mark, the black and white cinematography pulls a The Wizard of Oz and transforms into wondrous “Technicolor” as Adele implores, once again, “Go easy on me.” Also the mantra of every politician.
Showing that her sense of drama has given way to her more overpowering sense of humor, the video concludes with her breaking “character” and starting to laugh. Afterward, Dolan insists, “I’m keeping that.” She rebuffs, “No you’re not!” Needless to say, Dolan’s directorial veto won out, leaving us the only tonal differentiation between this video and “Hello.” Which is rather ironic considering that 2015 was a year that actually warranted such levity. But then, they say that it’s always best to choose laughter during particularly trying times. You know, such as 2021 (and, more than likely, beyond).
