Adele “Easy on Me” hit #1 for first of 10 weeks

Easy on Me Adele

Writer(s): Adele Adkins, Greg Kurstin (see lyrics here) Released: October 15, 2021 First Charted: October 23, 2021 Peak: 110 US, 115 BA, 12 DG, 15 ST, 12 AC, 110 A40, 2 AA, 32a RB, 18 UK, 18 CN, 14 AU, 12 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 4.0 US, 1.8 UK, 8.88 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 975.3 video, 1884.59 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: After Adele’s debut album, 19, in 2008, she won the Grammy for Best New Artist. Her sophomore effort, 2011’s 21, became the best-selling album of the 21st century with sales over 31 million. That album and its follow-up, 2015’s 25, both won Album of the Year Grammys. Between them, the two albums gave Adele four #1 songs. Her biggest was “Hello” from 25, which spent ten weeks on top. While that set the bar impossibly high for Adele’s 2021 release, 30, she still pulled off another multi-platinum, #1 album which spawned yet another huge hit, “Easy on Me,” another ten-week chart topper. The song broke streaming records for a song in both a day and a week for Spotify and Amazon Music. WK The song was also nominated for Grammys for Record and Song of the Year. Adele won both awards with “Rolling in the Deep” and repeated the feat with “Hello.” Could she pull it off a third time? The “minimally produced pop ballad [is] set to a prominent sobre piano and propelled by sparse beats. Expressing themes of nostalgia, regret, and forgiveness, the lyrics represent Adele’s plea to her son, [Angelo], in which she details her struggles with her dissolved marriage and requests him to be kind to her.” WK Adele and her ex-husband, Simon Konecki, separated in 2019 after eleven years together and finalized their divorce in March 2021. “Easy on Me” was the first song she wrote for 30. Then she wrote nothing else for six months because she though the song said it all. SF Adele said, “I just felt like I wanted to explain to [Angelo], through this record, when he’s in his twenties or thirties, who I am and why I voluntarily chose to dismantle his entire life in the pursuit of my own happiness. It made him really unhappy sometimes. And that’s a real wound for me that I don’t know I’ll ever be able to heal.” WK Nick Levine of New Musical Express said “Adele has never sounded better.” WK The Independent’s Alexandra Pollard praised the raspy vocals, sentimental lyrics, polished sound, and piano composition. WK Cat Zhang said in Pitchfork that the song “isn’t really trending new ground,” instead sticking to Adele’s classic formula. WK Resources: SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 1/12/2023; last updated 10/13/2024.

Harry Styles “Watermelon Sugar” hit #1

Watermelon Sugar Harry Styles

Writer(s): Harry Styles, Mitch Rowland, Tyler Johnson, Thomas Hull (see lyrics here) Released: May 15, 2020 First Charted: November 30, 2019 Peak: 11 BB, 11 DG, 17 RR, 11 A40, 4 UK, 3 CN, 5 AU, 21 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 7.0 US, 2.4 UK, 13.72 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 549.94 video, 2603.91 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Singer Harry Styles was born in 1994 in England. He got his start in 2010 with One Direction, a boy band formed on the British TV talent show The X Factor. They released five studio albums from 2011 to 2015, all of which topped either the U.S. or UK charts or both. They landed fourteen top-ten hits in the UK; four of them went to #1. He released his first solo album in 2017. The self-titled album topped the charts in the U.S. and UK, went five times platinum, and featured “Sign of the Times,” a #1 hit in the UK and a top-five hit in the U.S. His next album, Fine Line was released in 2019. It topped the charts in the U.S. and went three times platinum. The singles “Lights Up” and “Adore You” both reached the top ten in the UK. The fourth single, “Watermelon Sugar,” gave Styles his first trip to the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist or with a group. The song mixes elements of rock, funk, indie pop, and soul. The song uses fruit and summer as metaphors for a sexual experience. WK Styles specifically said it was about “that initial euphoria of when you start seeing someone, or sleeping with someone, or being around someone and you have that excitement.” SF He’s also said the song is about female orgasms. WK It has been speculated that the song is about Camille Rowe, a model who dated Harry in 2017 and ’18. In an interview with Elle magazine in 2017, she said that “Richard Brautigan’s post-apolcalyptic novel In Watermelon Sugar is one of her favorite books.” SF Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Harry Styles SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia First posted 4/13/2024.

Adele “Skyfall” released

Skyfall Adele

Writer(s): Adele Adkins, Paul Epworth (see lyrics here) Released: October 5, 2012 First Charted: October 7, 2012 Peak: 8 US, 11 AC, 14 A40, 3 AA, 2 UK, 3 CN, 5 AU, 7 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, 1.3 UK, 7.2 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 537.5 video, 489.16 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Singer/songwriter Adele Adkins was born in 1988 in London, England. She released her debut album, 19, in 2008. It was a huge success in her home country, reaching #1 and selling more than two million copies. It also got to #4 in the United States and sold three million copies. She also won a Grammy for Best New Artist. Her next album, 2011’s 21, made her a superstar. It spent 24 weeks at #1 on the Billboard album chart and sold more than 31 million copies worldwide. Three songs from the album went to #1 in the United States. It also won the Grammy for Album of the Year. It was hard to imagine how she would follow it. In 2011, Lia Vollack, the Sony Pictures President of Music, approached Adele about recording a theme song for the next James Bond movie, Skyfall. he thought her music had a “soulful, haunting, evocative quality” WK that would evoke the “classic Shirley Bassey feel” of early Bond films. WK Adele read the script and then she and co-writer Paul Epworth “aimed to capture the mood and style of the other Bond themes, including dark and moody lyrics descriptive of the film’s plot.” WK She said “it was one of the proudest moments of my life…I’ll be…60 telling people I was a Bond girl back in the day.” SF Daniel Craig, who played James Bond, said he cried when he first heard the song. “From the opening bars I knew immediately, then the voice kicked in and it was exactly what I'd wanted from the beginning. It just got better and better because it fitted the movie. In fact the more of the movie we made, the more it fitted it.” SF The song premiered at 0:07 BST on October 5, 2012 – Global James Bond Day – in elebration of the 50th anniversary of Dr. No, the first James Bond film. WK In a Dave’s Music Database ranking of the Bond themes, “Skyfall” came in at #2 (only behind “Live and Let Die” by Paul McCartney & Wings). It topped the charts in 15 countries and won the Oscar for Best Song as well as a Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media. It also took home the Brit Award for British single, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Song. Resources: Dave’s Music Database (10/5/2022). “James Bond Movie Themes Ranked” SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 1/18/2023.