The early 2000’s are known for making a lot of things iconic: low-rise jeans, flip phones and heelys. But more importantly, it launched the career of one of pop’s most soulful, powerful voices. In 2006, London singer Adele Adkins uploaded a few homemade tracks to social media. Two years later, Adele was signed and released her first album at the age of 19, titling it after her age. The standouts of this album are “Chasing Pavements” and “Make You Feel My Love.” “Chasing Pavements” shows a hopeless pursuit of a relationship that is already over or leading nowhere through a melodic pop-soul groove. Whereas “Make You Feel My Love” is a deeply emotional piano ballad.
The birth of “21”
But Adele’s career truly blossomed with the release of her album “21.” The 12-track album with no skips is a beautiful display of a girl in her twenties going through a breakup. Adele continued the trend of album names based on the age at which she wrote them, starting an iconic trend for her entire discography. The opening track for the album, “Rolling in the Deep,” was written on the same day as her breakup. This song is a powerful anthem of heartbreak that would be an anthem of the 2010’s. This song was the biggest song of 2011 and spent seven weeks at No. 1.
The album follows up with another banger. “Rumour has it” is a song I would describe as a revenge song, dissing her ex-boyfriend while saying she is better than his new girl: “Bless your soul, you’ve got your head in the clouds, she made a fool out of you and boy she’s bringing you down, she made your heart melt but you’re cold to the core, now rumor has it she ain’t got your love anymore.” This song has so many emblematic lyrics that show the anger of heartbreak. The album follows with “Turning Tables” and “Don’t You Remember.” These songs change the pace from anger to sorrow. Two heartbreaking and sentimental songs to keep the album on theme.
Track five, “Set Fire to the Rain”, is another standout of this album. She had just ended things with her boyfriend and stepped out into the rain, struggling to light a cigarette. In that moment, she felt completely defeated. All she wanted was to move on and leave everything behind. Frustrated and overwhelmed, she said, “All I want to do is put this behind me; if I had a fire, I would set fire to the rain”. And so “Set Fire to the Rain” was born, a passionate song that stands out mostly because of Adele’s breathtaking voice.
We will never find someone like Adele
“Rolling In The Deep” was one thing. “Someone Like You” was something else. Track 11, “Someone Like You,” made history as the first stripped-down voice-and-piano ballad to hit No. 1. By the end of 2011, “21” had already gone five-times platinum and was on track to sell an astonishing five million copies in the United States alone, sales numbers the music industry hadn’t witnessed in years. When talking about writing the hit song, Adele said, “Well, I wrote that song because I was exhausted from being such a bitch, with ‘Rolling in the Deep’ or ‘Rumour Has It.” This song is even more devastating than if Adele were simply a “bitch.” Instead of rage, she delivers pure heartbreak. “Never mind, I’ll find someone like you” is the most gut-wrenching and devastating lyric that Adele sings through breathtaking vocals. The spine-tingling piano ballad is a definitive breakup song to this day.
“21” holds the record for the most weeks at No. 1 of any album released in the 2010s. It also logged more weeks at No. 1 than any other album by a female artist across the entire 1956–2026 span. Adele has accumulated more weeks at No. 1 than any other solo artist born outside the United States, with Elton John ranking second at 39 weeks on top. She followed up “21” with the release of her albums “25” and “30”, which also had great success. Adele’s impact on the music industry is undeniable. I’m still patiently waiting for the day she brings a world tour to Salt Lake City so I can scream every word of “Someone Like You” right along with her.