Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Adele · S7 E2
Easy On Me
The lead single is a letter to her nine-year-old son explaining why his parents separated. It debuts at number one in thirty countries.
October 15, 2021. After six years of silence, Adele releases "Easy On Me" and it debuts at number one in thirty countries within 24 hours. The opening line is addressed to her nine-year-old son.
Adele, "Easy On Me" (official music video, 2021). Directed by Xavier Dolan, who also made the "Hello" video six years earlier. Adele drives through a rural landscape with sheet music scattering from the car windows, leaving a house behind. The visual picks up where "Hello" left off: same director, similar setting, but this time she's the one choosing to go.
Easy On Me
Co-written with Greg Kurstin at Metropolis Studios (where they also wrote "Hello"), the production is deliberately bare: piano, a slow kick drum that doesn't arrive until the final chorus, and nothing else. Adele stays in her mid-range for almost the entire song, choosing warmth over power. The phrase "go easy on me" is delivered without a single belt or power note. She's not demanding forgiveness. She's asking for it.
A Letter to Angelo
Adele has said "Easy On Me" is addressed to Angelo, explaining why she ended the marriage. The lyric walks a line no pop song has walked before: a mother telling her child that she broke up the family, that she's sorry, and that she'd do it again because staying would have been worse. It is the most vulnerable three minutes in her catalogue.
“"I want him to understand that I chose his happiness over mine. I chose to give him what I didn't have as a child, which is a happy parent."”
TAP TO REVEAL: What connects the "Hello" and "Easy On Me" music videos?
How many consecutive weeks did "Easy On Me" spend at number one on the Billboard Hot 100?
Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell
From Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now (2000). Mitchell first wrote this at 23, then re-recorded it at 57 with a full orchestra, transforming a folk song into a devastating meditation on love and loss. The connection to "Easy On Me" is the perspective shift: both songs are about seeing a situation from both sides and admitting that there are no clean answers. Mitchell needed thirty years to hear both sides. Adele needed a divorce.
Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell (2000)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Mitchell wrote these words at 23, the same age as Adele when she released 21. She re-recorded them at 57, a lifetime later, and the same words mean something completely different. That's what "Easy On Me" is about: the same person, the same life, but everything has changed.
Easy On Me
The single is the biggest debut in years. But the album behind it is unlike anything Adele has made before. Next episode: album 30, the most personal record of her career, and the voice memos that almost didn't make the final cut.
0 XP earned this session