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Adele · S6 E4
When We Were Young
Written with Tobias Jesso Jr. in a single session. The second single that proves 25 is not just "Hello."
2014, a writing session in London. Adele plays a new song for the executives at XL Recordings for the first time, and by the second chorus, several people in the room are in tears.
Adele, "When We Were Young" (official music video, 2015). Directed by Sam Brown, the video places Adele alone in a vast, empty ballroom, singing about time slipping away. No effects, no narrative, just a voice filling an empty space. The simplicity is the point: the song doesn't need anything but her.
When We Were Young
Co-written with Tobias Jesso Jr. during a single afternoon session, the arrangement builds from a lone piano into sweeping strings. Adele's vocal follows the same arc: intimate in the verse, towering by the final chorus. Listen for the restraint in the opening line, someone trying not to cry, and that control is what makes the release so powerful when it finally comes.
The Co-Writer
Tobias Jesso Jr. is a Canadian singer-songwriter who was virtually unknown when Adele's team brought him in for a writing session. He had released one album, Goon, on True Panther Sounds. Adele heard his music and requested him specifically. They wrote "When We Were Young" in a single afternoon, trading lines back and forth at a piano.
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Tobias Jesso Jr. end up in a writing session with the biggest artist in the world?
“"It's about bumping into someone that you used to know, and feeling like no time has passed but also feeling like a lifetime has."”
Who co-wrote "When We Were Young" with Adele?
How Could You Babe, Tobias Jesso Jr.
From Tobias Jesso Jr.'s Goon (2015). This is the songwriter who helped create "When We Were Young," singing in his own voice. The same piano-driven melancholy, the same emotional directness, the same instinct for a melody that sounds like it's always existed. Hearing Jesso's solo work after hearing what he wrote with Adele is hearing the blueprint that produced the song that made an entire label cry.
How Could You Babe, Tobias Jesso Jr. (2015)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Tobias Jesso Jr. writes with the same emotional precision Adele does: simple words, no cleverness for its own sake, just the truth of a feeling laid bare. The co-writer of "When We Were Young" is not a hitmaker. He's a songwriter. There's a difference.
When We Were Young
The songs are out and the album is breaking records. But Adele makes one decision that terrifies her label and confuses the entire music industry. Next episode: the streaming war, and the artist who proved you can still sell albums in the age of Spotify.
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