Adele's 30 hit #1

30 Adele

Released: November 19, 2021 Peak: 16 US, 15 UK, 16 CN, 17 AU Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.26 UK, 5.5 world (includes US and UK) Genre: blue-eyed soul

Tracks: Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Strangers by Nature [3:02] (12/4/21, 41 US) Easy on Me [3:44] (10/15/21, 110 BB, 121 AC, 110 A40, 2 AA, 32a RB, 18 UK, 18 CN, 14 AU, 12 DF) My Little Love [6:29] (12/4/21, 23 US) Cry Your Heart Out [4:15] (12/4/21, 44 US) Oh My God [3:45] (11/27/21, 5 US, 10 AC, 8 A40, 11 AA, 2 UK, 8 CN, 6 AU) Can I Get It [3:30] (12/4/21, 26 US) I Drink Wine [6:16] (12/2/21, 18 US, 4 UK) All Night Parking (with Erroll Garner) [2:41] (12/4/21, 53 US) Woman Like Me [5:00] (12/4/21, 55 US) Hold On [6:06] (12/4/21, 49 US) To Be Loved [6:43] (12/4/21, 32 US) Love Is a Game [6:43] (12/4/21, 56 US) All songs by Adele with other songwriters. Total Running Time: 58:15

Rating: 4.097 out of 5.00 (average of 33 ratings) Quotable: Her “toughest, most powerful album yet.” – Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: Adele’s fourth album deals with her separation from Simon Konecki (who she divorced in January 2021) as well as motherhood and fame. It has been described as “a pop, jazz, and soul album focusing on romantic but melancholic themes of heartache, acceptance, and hope.” WK Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield called 30 Adele’s “toughest, most powerful album yet.” WK Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph agreed that it was her strongest record yet. WK Variety said it is “her emotionally rawest, riskiest and best record.” VY The Guardian called it a “self-flagellating powerhouse of an album.” GU “This is a classy album, if not quite a stone-cold classic.” GU Her “emotions are fathoms-deep and mountain high.” GU Adele “ugly-cries, then wipes off her streaked makeup,” GU spilling forth “enough wrenching, life-and-death drama to leave you completely spent by the time the hour is up.” VY Because she was “denied a happily-ever-after nuclear family as a child, she wanted for her son” GU so her failed marriage caused her anxiety and guilt. She said the intent of the album was to explain things to her son, Angelo. GU As usual, Adele’s “vocal reach extends to the bits of stadiums only the pigeons and crane operators know.” GU “What’s new here is the…rawness of her feelings and how plaintive Adele’s pleas become for mitigating factors to be taken into account.” GU “Stymied by the notion that big emotions need inflation, 30 overreaches for the rafters a little too often.” GU This won’t be her biggest-selling album, nor does it have “a string of obvious world-conquering singles…although it has a good enough handful of un-obvious ones. But there’s a bracing maturity in these 12 tracks that’s more emotionally complex and intriguing than the rather more easy-to-follow woe of the preceding three collections.” VY She wrote the songs between 2018 and 2021, working with producers Greg Kurstin, Tobias Jesso Jr., Max Martin, and Shellback. All of them previously worked on her 2015 album 25. New to the fold is Dean Josiah “Inflo” Cover, who has worked with his own group Sault as well as Michael Kiwanuka and Little Simz. GU In February 2020, she announced that it would be out by that September, but the release was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic. WK As for the name 30, it refers to Adele’s age when she wrote most of the songs, VY not her age upon the album’s release (33). Charts and Sales The album sold 261,000 copies in its debut week in the UK, making for the biggest first-week sales of 2021. OC It was also the biggest opener for a female solo album since…well, Adele’s 25 album in 2015. OC All four of her studio albums have topped the charts in the UK. In the United States, all 12 songs from the album charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in the album’s debut week. While other albums have accomplished this feat, it is the first time for Adele. She laneded the biggest sales week of the year in the United States as well with 692,000. BB “Easy on Me” “The Adele you thought you know comes…sharply…into focus with…Easy on Me, which was picked as the first single for a reason: Musically, at least, it’s the one where she’s most saying ‘Hello,’ again, and it makes a good segue into some of the album’s riskier deviations from form.” VY “Strangers by Nature” On Strangers by Nature, Adele “proves nicely capable of restraining her full-bathos diva-ness in favor of a greater embrace of jazz-style singing.” VY She “establishes a Judy Garland atmosphere…Wrapped in Disney-soundtrack strings and flutes, the song sets up a melancholic, retro LA headspace.” GU “Cry Your Heart Out” and “Oh My God” Cry Your Heart Out “packs a little retro perkiness, echoing Amy Winehouse.” GU It is one of the album’s “most overtly commercial songs.” VY “Oh My God details Adele’s shock at a new relationship, accompanied by more frisky production.” GU “It’s the record’s sexy-AF breakout.” VY “Can I Get It” Can I Get It “represents the record’s most obvious booster-shot-bop. It’s a track made up of so many disparate parts, figuring out whether or not they organically connect isn’t easy even on a third or fourth listen.” VY “Martin and Shellback’s Frankenstein-ian pop confection moves from solo acoustic guitar to brash electronic beat and back again.” VY “I Drink Wine” “I Drink Wine is the track that Adele-oholics have already decided is their favorite; they don’t even need to hear it, with that title. It won’t be a letdown, even though it’s all about letdowns. ‘How come we’ve both become a version of a person we don’t like?’ she sings, over a solo piano bed that isn’t mournful, like the one in ‘Easy on Me,’ but sweet and gospely.” VY “Hold On” “The waterworks go all the way up to 11 on Hold On, whose hymnal qualities telegraph a faith that painful situations get better in time.” GU “Woman Like Me” On Woman Like Me, “there’s a small world of romantic and class power dynamics to unpack” VY as she “spints a scenario where a man, rather than rising to the occasion and embracing her boss-hood, has retreated to hang out with his old circle.” VY “She goes to a pretty dark place, and she’s not leaving us in the dark about it.” VY “To Be Loved” “Just when you think that Adele’s lungs can expand no wider…along comes To Be Loved.” GU This is “seven minutes of nothing but Adele and co-writer-producer Tobias Jesso Jr.’s piano. It’s not just the best singing Adele has ever delivered; you might leave it thinking it’s one of the best vocals anyone has ever recorded.” VY “All Night Parking” That “is the track that defines 30, but arguably the most grown-up tune on this very grown-up album is All Night Parking.” GU She sings “fresh lyrics over a vintage Erroll Garner jazz piano instrumental that’s embellished a bit with newly recorded trumpet and violin.” VY “Love Is a Game” The album “finds its…climax…in a fun cynical romp of a finale, one that takes just a little of the piss out of the sobriety of the last few songs. On Love Is a Game…the strings kick back in and swell to their grandest, and Adele does an almost girl-group call-and-response with herself.” VY Notes: The Target deluxe edition added bonus tracks “Wild Wild West,” “Can’t Be Together,” and a duet of “Easy on Me” with Chris Stapleton.

Resources and Related Links: BB Billboard.com (11/29/2021). “Adele Charts All 12 Tracks from ‘30’ on Billboard Hot 100” by Xander Zellner GU Guardian OC OfficialCharts.com (11/26/2021). “Adele scores Official Charts Double as 30 makes record-breaking Number 1 debut” by George Griffiths VY Variety WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 11/22/2021; last updated 2/17/2023.

Kacey Musgraves Star-Crossed released

Star-Crossed Kacey Musgraves

Released: September 10, 2021 Peak: 3 US, 11 CW, 10 UK, 9 CN, 9 AU Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, -- world (includes US and UK) Genre: country

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. Star-Crossed [3:19] (8/23/21, 37 CW) Good Wife [3:51] (41 CW) Cherry Blossom [3:04] (44 CW) Simple Times [2:47] (9/9/21, 31 CW) If This Was a Movie [3:15] Justified (Musgraves, Fitchuk, Ilsey Juber, BJ Burton) [3:01] (8/27/21, 26 A40, 10 AA, 22 CW) Angel [2:20] Breadwinner (Musgraves, Fitchuk, Juber, Burton) [3:21] (36 CW) Camera Roll [2:39] Easier Said [3:07] Hookup Scene [3:21] Keep Lookin’ Up [2:46] What Doesn’t Kill Me (Musgraves, Andrew Neely, Dante Jone, Dewain Whitmore Jr.) [2:17] There Is a Light [3:52] Gracias a la Vida (Violetta Parra) [4:32] All songs written by Musgraves with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 47:32

Rating: 3.625 out of 5.00 (average of 10 ratings)

About the Album: Kacey Musgraves won Grammys for Album of the Year and Best Country Album for Golden Hour, “a pop breakthrough inspired by the glow of a happy relationship” PF after her marriage to Ruston Kelly in October 2017. She returns three years later with Star-Crossed, an album about their divorce. She said, “I wasn’t going to be a real country artist without at least one divorce under my belt.” PF All joking aside, this is “a breakup record, sure – but not one driven by bitterness. It’s nearly, or completely, and remarkably anger-free.” NPR “If being in love made Musgraves feel connected to the world, these songs find her burrowing inward, questioning everything.” PF She said, “This album is full of love and gratitude for that person, for Ruston, for my life and my ability to explore all the emotions as a songwriter.” NRP ”Writing in the plain language of someone desperate to be understood, she sounds alternately vulnerable and triumphant.” PF Easier Said is “a songwriter witnessing the anticlimactic end to the relationship that inspired her most popular material.” PF She doesn’t just delve into the aftermath, however. She shows the marriage’s flaws from the onset. On Good Wife, she addresses “the humble beginnings of a marriage, but its lyrics suggest that, even back then, she felt forced into a role she wasn’t particularly suited for, bracing herself for failure.” PF On Breadwinner, she “tells the story about a male partner intimidated by a woman’s success, who latches on, vampire-like, nonetheless.” NY She recounts her divorce in the psychedelic country song Star-Crossed, which she described as a “Latin-inflected ballad about resigning from a relationship and accepting fate without bitterness.” WK “Healing doesn’t happen in a straight line,” she sings on the lead single, Justified. “The curiously sweet Hookup Scene captures the regret of finding yourself cast out to sea after a relationship ends. The patiently sad Cameral Roll details the modern conundrum of whether to scroll back through old photos.” NY Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian, who co-produced Golden Hour with Musgraves are back again. The album was recorded in Nashville in early 2021. She said Daft Punk, the Eagles, Sade, Weezer, and Bill Withers were influences for the album. WK She even tackles a Spanish song, Gracias a La Vida (although translated into English), originally by Chilean protest singer Violeta Parra.

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Kacey Musgraves NPR National Public Radio NY New York Times PF Pitchfork WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 11/19/2021.

Bob Dylan “Tangled Up in Blue” released

Tangled Up in Blue Bob Dylan

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