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Adele · S2 E3
Hometown Glory
Written at sixteen about an argument with her mother over whether to go to university. The first song she records. It ends up on the debut album.
2004, a practice room at the BRIT School. A sixteen-year-old sits down at a piano, plays a repeating four-chord figure she wrote after an argument with her mother, and records herself singing over it on a portable device. The song is called "Hometown Glory."
Adele, "Hometown Glory" (official music video, 2007). Written at sixteen about the streets of West Norwood after a fight with Penny about university. The spare, piano-driven arrangement leaves gaps between phrases that most songwriters would rush to fill. That instinct for space is not trained. It comes from years of listening.
Hometown Glory
"Hometown Glory" is about walking through West Norwood and seeing everything that makes the neighborhood real: the streets, the people, the sense of belonging that can't be replicated anywhere else. Adele wrote it in about ten minutes after Penny told her she should go to university instead of pursuing music. The arrangement is as simple as a song can be: a repeating piano figure and her voice. No producer, no studio. The restraint in the verses is the key. She leaves gaps between phrases, letting the silence carry as much meaning as the words.
The First Recording
"Hometown Glory" is the first song Adele records properly. The arrangement couldn't be simpler: a repeating piano figure, her voice, and nothing else. In October 2007, before XL Recordings signs her, Jamie T presses it as a limited-edition 7-inch vinyl on his independent label Pacemaker Recordings. Only 500 copies are made. Those original pressings now sell for hundreds of pounds.
Sources
NME, 2008
TAP TO REVEAL: How was "Hometown Glory" first released to the public?
“If it wasn't for Amy and Frank, one hundred percent I wouldn't have picked up a guitar, I wouldn't have written 'Daydreamer' or 'Hometown' and I wrote 'Someone Like You' on the guitar too.”
— Adele
Where did "Hometown Glory" eventually end up on Adele's debut album 19?
All Night Parking (with Erroll Garner) Interlude
From 30 (2021). Built on a sample of jazz pianist Erroll Garner, this interlude is the closest thing on any Adele album to the sound of her childhood: a warm, crackling jazz record playing in a South London flat.
All Night Parking (with Erroll Garner), Adele (2021)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Built on a sample of jazz pianist Erroll Garner from a 1974 recording. Adele layers her voice over someone else's piano, just like she used to do as a toddler listening to records in the Tottenham flat.
She has a song, a recording, and 500 vinyl copies on a friend's label. But a class assignment is about to put three more songs in front of the entire internet. Next episode: the MySpace demo that lands Adele a record deal.
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