Every Single Album - '30' | Every Single Album: Adele

Episode Date: November 21, 2021

"Sad Girl Autumn" is officially in full swing with the release of Adele's album '30.' Nathan and Nora talk about Adele's standing in the pop world and the outside influences on this album (0:00). Then they get into what they believe the biggest hit on this album will be, the poppiness of songs like "Can I Get It" and "Oh My God," Adele's powerful singing in "To Be Loved," and more of the best vocal moments throughout the album. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ringer Films and HBO's Jagged is the next installment of the Music Box series, taking you to 1995 when a 21-year-old Alanis Morissette burst onto the music scene. With never-before-seeing archival material and an in-depth interview with Alanis herself, Jagged explores her beginnings as a young Canadian pop star, the rocky paths she faced navigating the male-dominated music industry, and the glass ceiling she shattered on her journey to becoming the international icon and empowered artist she is today. Watch or stream Jagget on HBO or HBO Max this Thursday, November.

18th. Hello and welcome to every single album, Adele. I'm Norprinciotti. I am a staff writer at the ringer and I am here with Nathan Hubbard. Nathan, how are you on this fine Saturday? 30 is here. We've had so much buildup for weeks and weeks and weeks. Just a overwhelming tsunami of marketing around this thing. And it's here. I'm so excited. Very excited. And yeah, it's kind of crazy that this is the first time we've ever started this show without saying every single album Taylor Swift, although I guess we did the Olivia Roder episode. She wrote that album was basically a Taylor Swift. It was a Taylor Swift pod. Don't worry. Taylor has not left us and we have not left Taylor. Taylor will always be a part

of this and I think you guys will see there will be some nods throughout because it's very hard to talk about the state of contemporary pop music without talking about Taylor Swift. But we are here because we are going to, for our next series of episodes, contend with Adele who released 30 late Thursday night, or I guess early Friday morning. I have personal issues with the time midnight because I don't think it is clearly delineated which day it belongs to. But regardless, we've had more than 24 hours to sit with these songs, listen to them. We'd obviously heard a bunch of them before either because

they'd been released to singles, like Easy on Me, or through the CBS Special concert slash Oprah interview extravaganza. But Nathan, talk to me about your experience listening to 30. I know you were on a plane when it came out. So just walk me through that. I was on a plane. I landed and listened on the drive home. I mean, first of all, thank you, Adele for only making 48 minutes of music

instead of two hours and 10 minutes of music. It makes these reaction pods slightly easier to digest and prepare for. But for me, I read... Don't listen to him, Taylor. Keep it coming. Look, I read a lot of the reviews coming into this album.

This has been one of the most hyped albums in a very long time. And what we can talk about today, and time will tell. I mean, people... 21 was the album, is really the biggest album of the 21st century at this point, in terms of all the records, all the sales.

And this album was being described as Adele's best. And that is a really big statement for somebody who's won the album of the year Grammy twice, who at one period in time, really in the mid-2010s, was undeniably the largest touring act in the world, even though she couldn't get herself out there because of her voice. thing that we'll talk about. But the hype and the expectation coming in was pretty phenomenal, and it was all centered around, this is Adele's divorce album. And for me, I had a little bit of

skepticism coming in to push play because I thought the songs that we heard on the CBS special were good. They didn't blow me away on first listen. When I drove home Thursday night and listened to the album from the airport. From front to back, you understand why the hype was what it was. Let's debate whether this is her best album ever. But this is, I think, certainly her most dynamic album ever. It is sequenced purposefully, and I think incredibly intelligently. And I am reeling from some of the songs on this album. So I'm excited to break into it. What I want know from you is you've woodshed with this thing from the minute that it came out. How did it strike you? Nobody else in the entire world says woodshed as much as you do. It's a thing.

No, it's not. But, okay, I'll answer your question instead of making fun of you. It took me, I think, at least two listens. I loved the spectacle of the CBS. Um, of the concert of the special, just seeing her look super glamorous, you know, up on stage, just with that incredible voice. It did take me... Love the dress.

I don't usually love a mermaid, but I liked that dress. I thought she looked great. Well, she walked like a mermaid in it. It's like she had no legs. It was incredible. That's why it's a mermaid dress. Who would do that to someone?

But, yeah, just fascinating. A lot of people who make dresses. Okay. I was really, it took me, I think, two plus times through the album to really get it, to get the journey that it takes you on. Yeah. To kind of pivot from, look, we heard all of this lead up to the album from Adele in, you know, in the magazine interviews in her Instagram live, talking about this as a divorce record. And I think that makes you assume that it's going to actually be a why a relationship failed. record, which it really, really isn't.

It is the aftermath of realizing you need to make a really, really significant change in your life and the self-reflection process of trying to do that and trying to grapple with, you know, what a really significant relationship that's in some ways over for her meant, what she does now, what comes next. It's really a what comes next finding yourself record. Yeah, it's almost like every stage of grief is covered through the course of these songs. Right, right. It's the processing. I think when we think of, you know, whether it's any type of breakup, but when we think of a breakup record, what we're actually thinking about is someone relitigating why something didn't work.

Yeah, there's no breadwinner. That is not what she's doing. There's no breadwinner from Casey Musgraves on this album. No, not at all. A woman like me is here, but that's definitely not about Simon. Right. That's just this journey from picking yourself back up. It's almost more a letter to Angelo, then it is a divorce album, don't you think? And she's described it that way. I actually don't think that. I get why she would say, I want these songs to stand as something that my young son can eventually listen through and sort of understand where I was, understand what I was thinking, understand all the experiences that I went through during this time that he couldn't really understand. I think it's a letter from Adele to Adele. Yeah. And,

it can be super meaningful for her to think about her son eventually being, you know, having this text to understand that. But I have trouble hearing this in any way other than, you know, there are those voice notes where he asks her all of these questions. Mommy's been having a lot of big feelings recently. Just like, then you figure out on the rest of the record, she's asking questions. Right? Like, she doesn't have that ability to be a little kid asking his mom, like, what's going on? What's up with you and my dad? What does this all mean? Yeah. She's an adult, but she still has eight bazillion questions. And I think this is her way of sort of asking them and processing them and trying to answer them for herself. Be in my sweats and stuff like that. I just feel really don't leave. I feel a little bit frightened that I might feel like this or not. Which is really interesting. Yeah. I mean, there's a story in this album, right? There are book ends. Strangers by Nature starts it with this Judy Garland-esque, La Vion Rose copy almost with the strings. And speaking of Taylor, the end sounds a little like Marjorie with the singing in the background. But it ends with that line, all right, then, I'm ready. And then we go through really the phases of grief, the stages of grief through the course of the album. And then it sort of ends with love as a game. And the end of it, she said,

I do it all again like I did then. That's the last line. So we go from these, you know, and both those songs are not mere images of one another at all, but they both have a lot in common. And then you get through this journey. And the journey itself, I'm with you, it's certainly at a high level feels like it is to herself. I just note that for me, the peak culmination of this entire album is on the penultimate song, which is to be loved.

And that song is let that line in there, let it be known that. I tried. There is some part of this of wanting to put a stake in the ground for future generations of her kids and her family and the world to know that this isn't something that she did lightly and that, and that, you know, that's almost the acceptance phase, right? But there is a part of this that is for others and for the sort of historical record about the choices that she made, which she owns and is comfortable with, and I think by the end of this album is happy with. And we should talk about that, because this album actually wrapped before a lot of the next phase

of her personal life started, didn't it? I mean, I think now piecing everything together and we'll talk about Super Agent Rich Paul, which I just want to propose for the purposes of this podcast that we have to say it like Oprah did repeatedly throughout that special. Agreed. There's just an Oprah way of saying,

Super Agent Rich Paul. I can't say his name without saying, Super Agent Rich Paul. I don't know if he paid her to say it that way or what happened. but it's just the best, right? Can I just tell people right off the top here? You are the person who broke the Adele Rich Paul relationship to me.

It's true. I had a little birdie. It was months ago, maybe in the spring, I'm getting that timing wrong. I'll figure it out. I'll look up the texts. And you texted me and you told me this information. And I was like, holy crap, that's crazy. crazy. That's such a weird couple. I kind of love it, I think. And you were like, I see them around.

You know, we just need Super Agent Rich Paul to get Ben Simmons out of Philadelphia and then I'll be really impressed. But I think that is important context for this album because this thing was in the bag 18 months ago. And she has since, obviously, move forward. And what's beautiful about the ending of this album, I think, is that the last song, after going through all, you know, picking herself up off the floor, there's songs about her, I mean, that are clearly about depression.

And there are, you know, those voice notes where she's terrified. I mean, she just is sobbing and terrified. But by the end, there is some wisdom and a little bit of a wry grin and an understanding about what love is and a willingness to re-engage. After having gone through

what appears to be a rebound through the course of the last couple of songs before we get to To Be Loved. Anyway, I found this album to be a story from start to back, and that is why I'm dreading some of the categories that you're going to throw at me. Okay, well, so we're going to do the categories.

This is just going to be a reaction pod. We're still kind of living with this for the first time, and then we are in this series going to go back and, you know, go from start to finish. We will revisit 30 at the end of that journey, just to kind of look at it within a broader context after doing, after wood shedding on it, as someone I know would say. But we will, we'll do our categories here just to sort of get them into the mix,

go through them for the first time. I want to just loop back quickly to something that you said about this album being in the bag 18 months ago or whatever. Originally, this was supposed to come out in 2020. She got drunk and said so at her friend's wedding. And that leaked. we know it to be true. Thank you, Adel. You also know that's not the only time she got drunk and said,

of course, an album coming. Like, for sure. She had done that 100 times. It's just that her friend's wedding, there was some donkey who actually talked about it. Right, right. Well, I mean, look, when I have one too many glasses of wine, I tell people I have an album coming. Are we to accept then

that all of these songs were done at that point? because it's really interesting to me to think about that because some of the songs in the middle of that journey that I think you really aptly described, some of them clearly are about just dating initially after leaving her marriage. Yeah. Some of them feel as though they are about

Super Agent Rich Paul. Yeah. I think, by the way, excellent job. Now you're getting the hang of it. Thank you. Look, let's debate that as we go. through it. I read the woman like me, for example,

feels like a song about a rebound. And as you get into, oh my God, and can I get it? And, you know, they're sort of better dating. Those are the two that I'm talking about. Yeah. I look at those as her putting herself out for the first time. We know she was on a dating app.

And... Was she on Raya? Did she say that at one point? That's hysterical. Can you imagine? She was on Raya. Yes. and I'm going to leave that there. She was on Raya. She definitely had sort of a rebound relationship that I think is documented through some of these songs

in a way that she needed it. She sort of went a little gaga as one does in a rebound. And then, but it puts perspective, too much fucking perspective, on the malleability and the resilience of the human heart. this time she didn't end up on the floor in a puddle and I think it sort of by the end gives her that confidence to go forward

and then she walked into that relationship with Rich Paul. My own personal feeling, having stitched together the stories, is that this is about a journey that she went on to get herself ready to really fully love and be loved again and that she now feels like she found that with Super Agent Rich Paul. But you don't think that any of these songs

are actually about him. I do not. Wow. Wow. Okay, this is going to be interesting. I think that's what 32 is about. I mean, and as we talk about, by the way, as we just talk about the journey of this podcast through every single album, Adele,

it really becomes like how did a sort of British redneck become the biggest and most accomplished soul singer in the world? Okay. That's the story. And as we trace her, we're going to talk about 30 now, which is where she is in the moment. But as we trace her from 19 all the way through 30, that's going to be the most interesting part of her musical journey.

Okay. Now we're going to call Adele British Redneck again. I'm so mad at you. I swear we're getting through the categories. But I do want to just touch on that a little bit more before we do it. Because who Adele is as a star and what the promotional machine behind Adele looks like is really, really interesting to me. Because you know, something like 21 being the supernova that it was, Adele being the record sales juggernaut that she is, someone who's someone like, everybody take a drink, Taylor Swift, would move up a release date for. Yes. Rihanna moved her album into a completely different quarter the last time Adele put out an album. By the way, can I just say the thing about like, don't stream X artists record to get out of the way of Y artist being able to chart and a, like, stop doing that, people. Like, first of all, just the time honored tradition of pitting women against each other is alive and well, we can see. also, if Taylor wanted to go head to head with Adele

and make this into a giant competition, she would have kept the red release date as it was. This is a purposeful choice to let everybody have their moment. Right. The only competition really was Tiger King 2. And they got smoked. Nobody is talking about Tiger King 2. That thing, I mean, who releases any content

in between Taylor Swift and Adele. In the week in between Taylor Swift and Adele, no chance. I mean, look, from a numbers perspective, Nora, we know that the last week, Taylor's Red, broke the record for most streams in a day on Spotify ever. Like, she broke her own record of 90.5 million. Adele did something like 60.7 in the first day and landed sixth.

But that said, like, all 12 tracks are now in the global top 12 on iTunes and everywhere else. And only Arina Grande's thank you next has done that. So look, you still get the feeling this is going to be the biggest album of the year. And I guess with that data point, maybe that she's also going to date Pete Davidson before too long. But I think this is not a competition. These are very different artists. And Adele is what I wanted to get to. Adele is, you know, as we'll talk about in her journey on 25, she withheld a bunch of it from streaming in service of selling a lot of physical copies.

she has basically evaporated the world's supply of vinyl. Nobody can get a vinyl album made because so many copies have been pressed for Adele right now. Taylor didn't help, but Adele has... Yes, it's absolutely shut down. There already was a worldwide vinyl shortage, and people were waiting, you know, if you're an indie rock band, where people actually like to listen to your music on vinyl as opposed to hold on to it like it's a keepsake, you're screwed.

you will not have vinyl for over a year at this point. That's how backed up the pipeline is. And then Adele just came in. And of course, she has enough market-moving power that she basically took over the three big vinyl plants that sort of make this stuff. So she is the last of the sort of transitional huge stars. Taylor Swift is definitely a child of the Internet,

and it's been part of her start. But a lot of Adele's appeal, and she has said this in this cycle, right? is to that 30, 40, 50-year-old music fan. I mean, she, in fact, was dismissive of TikTok in one of her interviews and sort of said, I'm comfortable being the music for people who've been on that journey, who've been in therapy with me. Now, there is a weird dichotomy between that and the fact that this woman was actually discovered on MySpace,

and it accelerated her career. She was signed less than four months out of the Brits school. So it's weird that she's a little bit resistant to technology in a way that it sort of discovered. but she is one of the last old school artists. She has been a sort of sophisticated and presentation, adult-sounding artist, even when she has been very young. Yes.

Even when she has been a very young person. Yes, and she is still young. She's 33 for she and Taylor the same age, but their audiences are very different. Their stardom is very different. Taylor has embraced the always on. Adele is quite the opposite, and she may be the last star

who can go into hibernation for four years and then text her friends and say, I'm coming back. You know, I'm not a mom anymore, right? And so, God, you're going to hear a lot of my horrible British accent through the course of this pod. Yeah, this is troubling. I apologize, but you're going to have to deal with it. Imagine being Super Agent Rich Paul.

You have to hear it all day long. So that's what's fascinating about Adele and her story. And as we watch what 30 is going to do here, the physical stuff is now not really for listeners. The physical stuff is for collectors. The streaming is for listeners. And that's why I think these numbers that we're seeing, where she's doing incredibly well, we'll see at the end of this week, just how much her fan base, which is older, has migrated from the physical space to the digital space in terms of their listening habits when this week comes to a close. We're using Taylor as the reference point for, you know, the other world, because

we're us and because she just put out an album and it's an easy counterpoint. But the interesting thing, right, is, okay, so Taylor can do the stuff so easily with individual songs, right? Like, she can get 10 minute flipping all too well charting like Matt. Yeah. Adele presents the version where, okay, the individual numbers are not quite as high yet, but you can see from the fact that every single song is charting as it is. People are listening to the whole album. Yes. And did you notice, I mean, for me, listening to this versus listening to a Taylor record, for me, I listened to this first hearing her voice. I listen to a Taylor record and I first go lyrically, what is she saying? Here, I really focused first and foremost on how is she sounding and then I absorb the

rest of the song. They're very, very different list. listening experiences. Yeah, I think that's right. I think the other part of it is just... Taylor gives you so much more in terms of specifics that it's very easy to trace a certain journey on the album. I think one thing that we're going to end up talking a lot about with this is, okay, we have more context than ever before with what's going on in Adele's life

that is, you know, making her think right now and inspired this album and was part of her process of creating it. Yeah. We still don't know a fraction of what we get to know with Taylor. We don't. And we will ultimately talk about, you know, what does that mean, right? Because it took me longer to, when I said at the top that it took me a couple listens to sort of get the journey here, it really did.

Yeah. And part of that is because you're right. You're not listening for the lyrics first. You're not necessarily going into it being like, what story are you going to tell me? Yeah. And you're going into it first and foremost to hear someone who has this incredible instrument. Yeah. That's it. Well, what does that mean when Adele has sort of started to tell us fragments of a story? Yes. Right? Like, does this actually go far enough? And I'm not saying, she has to, you know, Easter egg until the cows come home like Taylor does. But what does that mean if you kind of go halfway with it, but don't fully let people in, in some ways let people into very, very intimate moments like the voice memos do. Yes.

But don't give, you know, you're not really coming with receipts in the same way that Taylor is. I felt that way about the PR component, where she was, okay, got it. You got divorced. There was one and only one insightful moment for me in the interview with Oprah, which was when she talked about her creative process and saying that there's a depth to what she creates, that she doesn't really understand, that gets pulled from a place that she thinks is deeper than she actually is as a human being. Now, I don't know. That's probably more self-deprecating Adele.

But the point of that is that there's more depth that comes out in the actual. songs than what she put out in the press. And when I listened through to the album, by the third or fourth time, I felt like I was really hearing the inside and the guts of her, particularly again in that penultimate song, which we'll talk more about. But I mean, she has said, just to be clear, she's never going to play that song live because it's so much her. But I think you're asking the right question, which is, okay, we'll debate, is this her greatest album or not? And I think we'll probably save that until the end. But in time, will we look at this as more vessels for Adele's amazing voice or an album with the richness and tapestry of something that is more enduring in terms of its meaning?

And that it's too early to tell. But I hear your point that we haven't gotten a whole lot of insight into who this woman actually is, particularly prior to this album. Right. Yeah. That's it. That's going to be the central question. All right. Shall we get to the categories? Let's do it. So our first one is going to be biggest hit.

And obviously at this point, it's in some ways too early to say since this album just came out. Easy on me is obviously still charting the best across the board, but it's been out there for a while. So that's, that's goosing those results. but let's put on the predictive hat here. What do you think is going to end up as the biggest song from this record? Well, I think it's between two. Easy on me is, and we're talking about hits,

easy on me, I think, is maybe going to win. I say that, I mean, the song itself is pretty accessible. It really is faithfully by Journey. I'm forever. with a little bit of a splash of Purple Rain mixed in. And this is the one that's the letter to Angelo for sure. The bass is very much like when we were young. So it sort of harkens back to some of our earlier hits.

And oh, by the way, the producer who does most of the songs on this album and co-writer is Greg Kirsten. He did Hello, which this is really a not so distant cousin to Hello. He also did Water Under the Bridge and a million years ago. So he's a known entity for her. I think that probably easy on me ends up being it. That said, if there's going to be one hit that is more of a banger, I think it's can I get it? And that's the Mack song that starts with the sort of rumor has it, quarter note drum beats. It's got the background yelps that you will remember.

And again, we draw the lineages and the connections to Taylor. she reached out to Max Martin when she heard, I knew you were trouble. She said, who did that to Taylor? She's navigating the jump between genres incredibly well. She had no idea who Max Martin was. And here we go. Max has worked with her before,

but here, you know, this, the background Yelp sound vaguely reminiscent of a Taylor song. The strip down acoustic guitar sounds vaguely reminiscent of we're never getting back together. You know, it's Shelbach and Servan Ganea working on this thing. This is a song about dating in L.A. It's basically like the Raya theme song. And it's awesome. If there's going to be a real hit, this is it.

I know they're going to release. I drink wine and I may be wrong about that. But this is the one that it feels like people are going to gravitate to. What do you think? I love that song. I love it a lot. I think it's great. And it's funny because that acoustic guitar like chunky intro

Sounds like Danny California to me. It's funny because that's just a simple, like we've heard that a million times, right? But from Adele, it grabs you because it's so sort of, it's almost like coffee house garage band vibes. It's so not elegant and separate in a way that Adele often is.

So I think it's fascinating as kind of like the dating in LA song, right? Because she's like down on the pavement with everybody else right now. And you hear that so sharply with the way that it starts musically. I also was really satisfied by just loving this song because I do not love, send my love to your new lover, which is the song that she did with Max for the first time. I've never like been able to attach to that song. I just think it sounds like too choppy and I don't, nothing about the melody grabs me. So. I disagree. Oh, well. Well, tell me what you like about it.

I would love to be sold on it, but it's just never been a song that I've liked very much. So I was very happy... But this one rocked you. When we got to the Mac song and I was like, yes! All right.

At least he was using his time well when not contributing to Red Taylor's version. Is there something we need to think about when we consider a hit for Adele? We're gravitating to this in part because we know the parties behind it extraordinarily well, and there's threads of it

that are achingly familiar to something we've spent ungodly amounts of time talking about. But I wonder if the point we made before, which is that the audiences are slightly different, I mean, Adele is in a lot of ways more accessible. She has a more diverse audience. She has a little bit of an older audience. I wonder if I'm missing what's going to be a hit because of that. I mean, I don't think there's any question that, you know, to be loved is an extraordinary song. We'll talk more about that, I bet. But I drink wine. I mean, this is as close as she sounds to Aretha, you know, as she ever has, really. With the organ and everything else, there was a 15-minute version of I-drink wine. Yes. Exactly. It's cheeky as fuck. Like,

is there a chance that this goes in your mind? Yes. I think there is because it's so, I mean, I just hear it as an Elton John song. It's got that ability. to let her sore vocally, but it's also something you could just like grab your buddies and belt in the back of a bar. An Adele ballad that's actually doable for somebody, I mean, other than the length of it,

like doable for somebody at karaoke. I think there's something exceptionally appealing about that. The other one, I know it's a little scary. Don't take my advice on that one. People just... Back off. Yeah.

Yeah. leave it to Adele. Don't do Adele. Let Adele do Adele. Oh, boy. Nathan's already doing Adele with the accent. We don't need to get any further into this. Fuck off. Oh, my God. Speaking of which, I just said, oh my God, because you said, because you, you swore at me in Adele. Oh, my God is another song that we should bring up in this category here. Because I was a little bit surprised to see it very often as the number two song on the charts so far. And obviously, you know, it is Saturday afternoon. right now. So we are not very far into the lifespan of this thing. Right. But you get through and you're going on this journey, cry your heart out is kind of the palate cleanser, like, it's not all going to be down.

And there's going to be... Yeah, although it's about depression. It's basically, is this love by Bob Marley about depression? But it's also about like, you go through that period and then at least as the journey of the album takes you,

then you come out and there's some more upbeat stuff going on. And that's when you get oh my God and can I get it? So far it seems like more people of those two are streaming, oh my God.

You think it's because it's first? Maybe. Sequentially. I like, can I get it better? Me too. But I'm curious to see if that holds up just because, oh my God, is a little bit more, you know,

it has the sort of Afrobeat, inflected baseline thing. Heavy Annie Lennox vibes. It's a little more sophisticated. Yes. Somehow, I think, can I get it, is way more fun. And it feels way more alive to me, which is why I like it better. but it is an interesting test case for what a pop Adele sounds like and what works for her audience when she's, you know, she's not scared of using a computer.

She's not scared of having the vocals, whether it's the lead vocal or much more often, the backup vocals modulated in ways that, you know, make everything super funky. what when she's working in that space works for her audience, I think will be really interesting. And that was one of the biggest early surprises to me so far was that it seems like people are latching onto, oh my God, as one of the poppier songs. Yeah, there are chapters to this album, right? Easy on me. I mean, Strangers by Nature is that sort of opening bookend.

She says, all right, then I'm ready. You know, the question is, are we for crying out loud? But then easy on me, my little love are just, you're smashed, you're on the floor by the end of my little love. I mean, that outro on my little love is basically Marvin Gay's Mercy Me. There's a lot of sort of similarities between the two. But by the end of it, you're just hearing, I mean, she's sobbing. That just sob at the 445 mark. And I feel like maybe I'd be like overcompensating and being out.

The sniffle. She's just destroyed. Cry your heart out feels like this gaggle of electronic girlfriend sort of giving her the advice and telling her that she's going to get through it and sort of flush the system. And then the new chapter starts with, oh my God, where she's now like emerging from her house and sort of walking down the street in sunlight ready to go out and put her foot in the water again. So there is this vulnerability and protagonist you're cheering for. The comeback has started with, oh my God. And maybe that's the one that that, that, people are going to feel more connected to than can I get it, which sounds like her being a little naughty. And I think on reflection, when you really listen through it, it's a condemnation of what it's like to date in L.A. when everybody just wants to hook up. Two things. Oh, God, what I do? Cry your heart out. No, you're wonderful. Nathan, you're always wonderful. On cry your heart out, tell me the backup vocals don't sound like Alvin and the chipmunks.

There is heavy-duty Alvin and the chipmunks going on. No doubt. It's the only thing I can hear. I really like the song. And it is funny because you're right. The subject matter is depression. Nevertheless, it does start that next chapter of the album

because as soon as that came on when I was taking notes, the first thing I wrote down was, I think we have the first bop of the album. Yeah. And it brings, it does give you, you know, I mean, even though, who did we say was in charge of writing upbeat, sad songs in the last pod, train? Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a train song. It's kind of a train song.

Oh, second thing. I just, yeah, but before you get off that, you're right on Alvin the Chipmunks. How the fuck did Bob Saggett get in that movie? What a weird casting. Continue. Second thing. we have to hand it to super agent Rich Paul for what for for pulling off

Did Ben Simmons get traded? Can you imagine if a Ben Simmons trade broke while we were potting on Adel? The jokes would just be just, just inseparable. We got a month. We're going to figure it out. So I am hearing from you that you believe these two songs specifically,

oh my God and can I get it, were written about just forays into the dating scene in L.A. Yes. Before she met Rich Paul on the dance floor, as she said, at an event. Yes. And I'll tell you what. Well, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Holding on. The marketing move of the century by Super Agent Rich Paul.

Sorry. Super Asian Rich Paul. Because everybody thinks these songs are about him. Yep. and he's doing, by the way, he soft launches Adele on his Instagram, but the first photo in the post is him and Oprah and then it's like, oh, you swipe and now Adele's in the photo, my girlfriend.

We see you, Rich Paul. We see you Super Asian Rich Paul. I bet you think this song is about you. Yeah, I think, and the reason that I think that is because the next song, I drink wine, to be clear, there's a line in there that says, you know, because of that period, of time, even though it was so much fun, I didn't get to go on and make new memories with him.

There were just memories in a big storm. And that to me is that sort of reflection on she wasn't quite ready to get fully into a relationship. There was still too much going on. But it then leads into all-night parking, which feels, again, like that sort of infatuation, heavily intoxicated with someone. It's all about the rebound. And then bang, woman like me hits. Driving me away Give me a reason to stay I want to be lost in you Which is really the first

Fuck You and only Fuck You song on the album Sounds a bit like Skyfall in the chord progressions But here she's getting in and out of a relationship Without it destroying her She's angry but she's not on the floor You know and that to me feels like The next chapter after putting herself out there And oh my God can I get it

I drink wine, she starts to get reflective, she gets intoxicated, and then bang, you know, she walks out of that relationship. But that rebound relationship helps set her up for Super Agent Rich Paul. All right. I buy your argument here, but I do think that that's very impressive on his part. I guess this is what he's putting his efforts into instead of getting Ben Simmons traded in that all of those songs are coming off as though they are about him. Yes, you're right. And I think I think the intertwining, of those narratives will, if you don't get underneath it and think about the timing, listen, it only benefits Super Agent Rich Paul. Well, and we'll figure out if ultimately Adel feels like

it benefits her or if it's something that annoys her, right? Like this is, we've talked about this with Taylor so many times, the cost of letting people in. That's right. While the benefit can often be that people attach to your art in an even more meaningful way, if they feel like they know the story behind it, they feel like they can sort of overlay that on things that have happened in their own lives, you do give people license to paint with a sometimes unspecific brush. And maybe she'll be okay with that. Maybe she won't.

She's doing it in a more substantial way than she ever has before. So I think that's absolutely something that we're going to keep on watching. Well, those are possible hits, right? But then I think there's a different category. Which is best song. Yeah. So I was conflicted on this one because. Yeah, because there are songs on, there are songs on this album, particularly, I think,

to be loved that I think are just so, so impressive. I have to be myself here and just be honest. I'm going to listen to the Mac's song way more than anything else on this entire thing. Wow. And I have to just acknowledge that I think it's the best one and I like it. And I'm sorry, it's not very sad girl fall of me. But I love that song and I'm just doing it. That's what you're taking.

All right. Hey, live in your world. That's what this album is about. Be who you are. Leave your relationship with the piano ballads in service of the Mac song. I don't blame you for that. I think it's great.

I don't think I've ever heard a song quite like to be loved. It is astonishing on every level for me. Again, coming in, I think a lot of the reviews of this album felt like hyperbole and felt like sort of kissing the ring more than really doing thorough analysis of songs. And acknowledging, you know, as we talk about on this pot a lot, like, the roots of some of

these songs are pretty apparent. They aren't necessarily particularly innovative songs in some cases. But I just am still in shock from To Be Loved. It is unsingable. She is hitting these E-flats. and I think in parallel the Instagram post, which may be the only live performance that we ever see of this song,

because it is so close to her heart. She just said, I will not perform this song. I can't. There is something about the vocal performance that is just unstoppably impressive. It just, I mean, it's this affirmation of the choice that she made in leaving her marriage. the core mission that North Star on the Hill

for her was wanting to love and be fully loved. And this is a song about acceptance, which is that final stage of grief. And it just to me is the most remarkable song on the album. It's putting yourself out there saying, just let it be known that I tried. I love the line, I'll never learn if I never leap.

I love the line, all I do is bleed into someone else. She brings some of that Tottenham growl towards the end. It's just unsingable. And so it just sort of stands alone for me as this unicorn that will always exist on this album that anytime it's in the background, I've had a lot of people walking through my house over the last 24 hours. Everybody from my children to adult friends have stopped and gone, what is this? And I think that's how we're going to think about it. Now, it is a lot like natural woman. Like she even says the line looking back, which is how the Carol

King's song starts. Looking out. So it has lots of natural woman tied in it. And that may be the reason it doesn't deserve best song. But I just think on this album, it is a moment. It is the end of this powerful journey.

Somehow she and Tobias Jesso Jr., who did all the Nile Horan stuff, also did my favorite song from 25, which is when we were young. Me too! Yeah. Okay, well, we'll come back on that one. But he got in a room. They found a way to do it together at the same time where they hung up a bunch of blankets and stuff to insulate

her voice from his piano so there wasn't bleed between the two mics. And they did it together. And it just, she, you and I got together in New York this week, which was super fun. I was so happy to see you. That's only the second time we've ever gotten to do that. But I told you, like, I think we need to do a DNA test because I think her dad might have been a piano. Like, she is meant to be paired with a piano. And we'll see that through the journey of these. albums, I think. And this song for me, it transcends hello for me. I don't know if it transcends a few of her. I mean, does it transcend make you feel my love? Does it transcend? You know, we'll talk about that. But it is different and it just screams. This is really the most impressive

voice of her generation for this kind of music. I don't know that she could make a Beyonce record. I don't know that Beyonce could make an Adele record. Another thing. thing we'll debate, but this is just a stunning song. Nathan, you're a very funny person. You make a lot of good jokes. What did I do? Adele's dad might have been a piano. That's the one you wanted to bring out a second time.

I don't know. I just, I think it's, I, I just, I believe it. Like, she's, she's otherworldly. She's an alien. And I think, she's meant to be paired with that instrument. What do you, so, so, so, all right. How did you respond to that song? Did you respond emotionally to that song?

Yes. Is it just the vocal piece for you? Do they not match together? Like, poke holes in it for me. I really, I don't have a lot of holes to poke because this is the song where I feel like my questions about. Is there some lessening of the impact when you don't? So she takes us on this journey that includes a lot of pain and a lot of pain and a lot of lot of self-reflection and a lot of, a lot of vulnerability, but not necessarily, it doesn't

always strike me as particularly raw. And I think that's actually kind of strange. And I wonder if a lot of people just disagree. Because in some ways, you could hear something like, you know, just using voice notes of your child asking you questions about leaving your marriage with his father. Yeah. In some ways that just in the act of doing it is incredibly vulnerable, there was something that pretty often struck me as curated here. The Adele that we're getting is pretty careful to talk to you about a journey that ends in a kind of self-acceptance.

I don't think she's saying in any way that that's, you know, a done deal and everything's always going to be roses from here on out. But there is something sort of clean about it. There's something that I think is very interesting about her choice to focus on that as opposed to, you know, okay, relitigating what went wrong, something like that. I do think that inevitably there are songs that have a little bit more raw. edge to them like someone like you, like hello. Yeah. That are just bigger. And I'm not sure if they're just bigger because they have that kind of material,

that kind of source material, and they're engaging with just something that's a little bit, the wound is just a little bit fresher feeling. They have more of a chorus. They have a melody line that you can pull. I don't exactly know what the melody line that you can pull from this one is. but I don't know that you hum this to yourself. I think, and because of that, I think reasonable minds can disagree on whether or not

that's just because of some musical choices and musical elements in those songs, or if it's because there is a little bit more sort of active regret and lack of some type of closure that she seems to have here on those songs, this is the one, To Be Loved is the one where I really, really, really buy the wrong. of it.

Like, I absolutely believe just hearing her voice isolated against only that piano that's sort of falling out towards the end. This is her sort of deepest insecurity that she's not going to achieve the thing she wants more than anything else, which is just to be loved and to love in a full and warm way that she's always wanted. like that I there's no question to me when I hear this song that this is this person just telling us exactly how she feels in some powerful but also really really vulnerable moments so I think it's incredible I agree with you that I don't and she said she didn't want to make a hello she didn't want to put a hello on on this album both because of what that means for her own sort of personal fame but also because it's just not the place that she's in overall, I'm not going to lie. I wish there was a hello on this record. Yeah.

But not with this song. So I'm totally with you that it's a contender here. Well, the person who she worked with on hello is a guy named Greg Kirsten. And for me, as we move to the next category, which is most important collaborator, I think that I end up with Greg Kirsten because he produced the bulk of this album. I now know what you're going to say to this. But he produced the bulk of this album. He got a lot of these songs out of her.

There is a musical consistency across the album. You can hear when Inflow is doing the tracks. You know the Mack song. You know, the only other one is really Tobias Jesso, Jr., who does To Be Loved. I mean, certainly Strangers by Nature, she did with Ludwig Gorensen, who's a Swede,

who's worked with Childish Gambino. But that, again, is sort of this opening Judy Garland-esque blossom that starts off the album. So for me, it is Greg, who is the guy who was the most important collaborator on this album. Because I just feel like he got the most out of her in terms of content, in terms of consistency and the journey and story of this album. I think that's the right answer. Right. He's on just so many songs. Clearly, he's someone who really, really has her trust. I do want to talk about Inflow for a moment. I just thought that she said some really interesting things about him getting her to listen to some old favorite albums, Al Green, Marvin Gay, and just focus in on kind of the lack of technical perfection. She said to Rolling Stone, he was like, if you really listen, this is a mess.

If you really listen, people are playing the wrong notes. They're coming in at the wrong time. It's all about the energy and the atmosphere that that creates. Why would you want anyone to do another take if you've just got the most perfect take there is? And she said that that was something that freed her on this project, particularly after on 25, she felt a lot of need to have everything be very technically perfect. And I think that's really valuable because if you listen to a song like woman like me, a lot of the lyrics are not, they're a little strange.

They almost don't fit the phrasing that they're put into. Her voice is so velvety that I think it makes it not matter. But you do need that permission structure to just say, hey, it doesn't have to be so technically perfect and it's actually going to sound even better because you have this unbelievable instrument. let's not treat it to death. So I think that's a really valuable thing, but I do think that you're right. I think Kirsten is the right choice

for most important collaborator. On Inflow, I mean, you can hear the albums that he pushed her to listen to, in particular on Love is a Game. Like, I don't know if, I don't know if he made her listen to a Nat Kinkl album, but like this sounds a lot like unforgettable. Like, unforgettable.

Like you can hear when she says, incapable and impossible. In the first verse, it's all right there. And then the outro has, it's got like Barry White's, you're the first, the lasmi, everything, totally dialed in with the strings and the sort of background stuff. So I, you can see her sort of spinning around and taking her bow on the stage as she leaves at the end of that. But those influences definitely paid off. I don't adore the songs that they did together.

But I think she also credited him. I think he's got the West Norwood hometown connection with her. And I think she credited him with maybe underage. corking her at the start of this album process. So I agree that he was important, but I do think at the end of the day, it's Kirsten who gets this award. Yep.

All right. So we've talked about this a little bit. But we are, for every album, as a nod to our girl, Taylor Swift, and to illustrate some of the ways in which Adele is just sort of a different type of artist, we're going to check in and see if there are any meaningful Easter eggs.

Adele does not really Easter egg, but it's notable when there are nods to her personal life. We've obviously talked about it a little bit here. I think the winner is none other than Super Agent Rich Paul because of the way that some of the pop songs come off as being about him when maybe they aren't actually. But what do you think? Well, that's interesting.

I don't feel like she really Easter egged it for us, though. I mean, this was a hard one. I think she did by going to a basketball game with him. Yeah. multiple games with him at this point. And give me all the Adele courtside outfits you can bring me until the NBA finals. I don't know.

This one was hard for me because I felt like divorce album, divorce album. Like she kind of gave us all the context here. Maybe it's the voice memos for me tucked in. It's just that, first of all, be careful. Adele records your conversations for crying out loud. And so I just next time you... Angela is going to listen to this in 10.

years and be like, Mom, what the fuck? Like, that's not even legal in California. Yeah. Oh, imagine the volumes of weird Angela's shit she's going to have by the time he's a young adult. Anyway, you know, this one, what I like about this album is that there isn't much hidden from us here in terms of what it's about, and she was direct about it. I do think as we go forward, there is a conversation about what we don't know about Adele.

She's a very different kind of celebrity. and she only lets us in as approachable and relatable as she is. And I think that's the fuel for her celebrity. And people feel like she's one of us. We don't learn that much about her. This album, we know she got divorced. We know she was crushed and she takes us on a journey. We don't know very much about the specifics or the details or anything around it.

We know she's got a son, Angela. We know she has an ex-husband, Simon. We know she's got a new boyfriend, Super Agent Rich Paul. and we know this was a really painful process. But that's about it. All right. This one, I think, is going to be easier. It's Peak Adele.

Do you want to go first or do you want me to? I'm going to go first. How about it? Look, I honestly, I know I'm not allowed to pick three. But first of all, Peak Adele is deadlifting 170 pounds and talking about how she's an athlete. A-F-L-E-T-E.

You're just a little Scottish. there, I think. Deadlifting 170 pounds. Holy crap. Like, that is a lot of weight. And I'm an off-leet. On a deadlift, we were getting up to like 160, 170. Yeah, I love it.

But it started out at 10 pounds. I should have been an athlete. If only at school, hadn't discovered boys, and someone had told me to go and do a bit more PE. That was Piccadale for me. My second and third place was the mermaid dress and sort of like pitter-patter crab walking. off the stage, which was just this sort of, it's the two adels. It's this unbelievable elegance and then

her sort of every woman persona where she just sort of is tiptoeing off the stage because she can't even move in it. But I will also say like, you know, dating Super Agent Rich Paul, like she doesn't like her celebrity status. She doesn't want to be a celebrity. But man, she had a lot of celebrities in the audience on that Oprah show. And we can talk about how the hell they figured out the guest list and where people sit. at another time. But for you, what is peak Adele?

So you hinted at it. For me, it's the special. It's the big dress. It's the beehive, you know, practically up as high as Saturn itself. It's the big earrings.

The Saturn earrings. The Saturn earrings. It's pulling out of earlobes. Do you believe in the Saturn return? No, I don't. I think that you... Sorry. We need like a downer sound effect.

No, I think you grow up and people are around 30 and sometimes their lives change. But I'm happy for Adele and if she wants to explain it as the Saturn return, then so be it. But no, I don't. I don't believe it at all. But I don't know. I'm 27, so we'll see what happens. Just you wait. Again, I absolutely believe that pivotal life changes happen at that period in people's lives.

I just don't think that it's because of Saturn's location. Anyway, the dress, the beehive, all the celebrities, just the peak, absolute glamour, spectacle, elegance of hearing Adele's voice in just an unbelievable location. And yes, there are certain elements of that where, against the backdrop of the Hollywood sign, with all those celebrities, you're sort of thinking, okay, this is, this is, this. is different for her, right? Like, she used to sort of hate this stuff. Now, does she necessarily hate it so much?

Does she like certain trappings of fame, I wonder? You can hear her cackling, like, trying to decide where Ellen sits relative to Leo and where James Corden goes relative to Dwayne Wade and Drake versus Lizo and just being like, ha ha ha ha. Well, and then she does the cackle after the couple gets engaged on stage. By the way, I hope she's that poor woman. That would have been so terrified. Can you imagine? Speaking of Womp, Womp, how about the doofus journalist who's going to follow up and write the actually they never got engaged?

The guy all staged it so he could be on TV story. I'm just waiting for the sad news that came out of that. Oh my God. You think the couple from the Adele Special is going to get milkshake ducked? I don't know. Womp, Womp, Womp. Womp, Wom. Nora, what is the best vocal moment on this album? It's To Be Love. I mean, just totally schnikes. E flats.

I will honorable mention the E in easy, in easy on me. I just love how that sounds. Nice call. But there is no question that it is to be loved. It's just, and they know it, right? Like, there is a reason that that song is just her and piano. Yeah. I like the high C and hold on.

But like she walks this line between wailing and singing and howling and growling. It's like she's actually in control of the little bits of shit in her vocal cords. And to that end, it's worth pointing out she has had surgery there.

She had polyp. And I don't know. I mean, do we... Is it like a performance-enhancing drug? Is she like the Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds of singing? Is it... Like, did they create a more perfect thing

than human... beings are supposed to be able to create on their own? Is the deck stacked, is what I want to know? Or could somebody else do this? Isn't it more like after Tommy John surgery? Sure. Like, I don't think that there's any sort of impropriety here, but she said herself that her voice is sweeter now than it was before.

I mean, part of that is because of the polyp she was getting, by her own description, a little husky in the sound. I'm sure chain smoking didn't have anything to do with it. Yeah, I mean, she does sound, she obviously sounds amazing. I do wonder, she's had to cancel two tours, as we'll talk about. She gets injured a lot. She's like the Bo Jackson, maybe, of singing, in that her physical capabilities actually outpace what her body,

some parts of her body allow her to do. And it will be fascinating to see how she tours going forward based on this album, because she's got to try to protect the voice. The last time that we saw her, she was writing a deeply apologetic and sort of almost tragic letter having to cancel two Wembley shows because she just couldn't do it.

And we'll see where this voice goes from here. But it is to be loved, no doubt. I would never cut that song, Nora. But if you had to cut a song on this album, what's it going to be? Yeah, look, this one was not hard for me. The first track, the Judy Garland Strangers by Nature situation

just didn't do much for me. Yeah. I mean, it is La Vion Rose. I love the line. I'll be taking flowers to the cemetery of my heart. It is sort of a beautiful intro to what this thing is.

And I do think that, all right, then I'm ready, is important. And so for me, it's my least favorite song, but I think if you cut it from the album, given the way that it mirrors love as a game at the end, that you sort of take away the front cover and back cover

of this album. And so maybe it's heresy to say, but for me, I'd cut all night parking. When I'm out at a party, I'm just excited to get home and dream about you. Whoa. I think the album could live without it.

And yes, it talks again about that intoxication of the rebound relationship, but I still think that the narrative flows through the album. If you have to cut one, no offense to the old-timey jazz pianist playing on it. But I, Errol Karner, I am okay with jettisoning that one. Okay. Well, so I'm going to use that as a segue to jump into our next category here, because I hear you, I do think that if you want to cut from the perspective of what song can the journey of this album remain intact without,

that's probably right. I think it's a much more interesting song than strangers by nature. I just, I... Agree. I like Love is a game so much more of those cinematic bookends. The thing that I really like about all-night parking, And this is where we go to our next category, which is, I think right now, maybe this will change.

Right now in my head I'm calling this category, what is this British thing? And for me, that's a funny thing to think about with this album because Adele at this point in her life, she seems very American. Like, she's fully living in L.A. She seems pretty, you know, she seems like her life has changed in ways.

She's got a bad tattoo. it's very LA it seems like her life has changed substantially since she kind of settled here in ways that make her seem if she is of a place right now I don't get all that much London from her personal life

but where I do get it very much is still in the music all the dalliances with jazz with a little bit of reggae with some of the Afro beat stuff I mean, that's a really, there's a UK sensibility, I think, in using all of that and foregrounding all of that, that really, really took me back a lot to some of her earlier stuff. You know, you just hear like, okay, she would have been training at the Brit school,

absolutely having jazz training, absolutely working with a lot of these sounds, pretty regularly. And you heard her do it a good amount on 19, sometimes I think to not all that much success. Oh, yeah. And then now we hear her contend with a lot of those sounds in a much more sophisticated way, in a way that feels very much more a piece of her and much more natural. So I don't want to lose all night parking because I do like I really love the choice to be sampling Errol Garner. And I just think that using those influences makes this a much, much, much, much more interesting album than it would have been if we just were getting, you know, here's a bunch of ballads. And there's something very British about that choice to me.

And I think that's interesting. Fucking hell is what I say to that. Fucking hell. Why do you have to be so intelligent. I literally, for this category, like, what is this British thing? What is the phrase doing my face mean? What does that mean? It means putting makeup on. Oh. Like, what is this British thing? It's not a British thing. Yes, it is. No, it's not. It's... It's... An American woman could say, I'm going to go do my face. But nobody would be like, oh, it's going to mess up my face. They might say it's going to mess up my makeup, but not my face. Anyway, what is this British thing? No. No. Okay. I support you. I support you, but no. All right. Stupid man questions is what we'll call this category from now on. I think that might be right. Oh, boy. That's a category not only for this

podcast, but for life. Well, we're on to the last category, Nora. Oh, my gosh. And it's one that we talked about together in person, I think. And it's a very interesting one for this artist because she has done a lot of covers in her life. And the question and the category is what song should she have covered? Now, shout out to the ringer social account for stealing this from us yesterday. Great minds clearly think alike. And there were some really interesting, very interesting comments from followers of the ringer Twitter account on what song she should have covered. But not for this album. That wasn't the question. This question is specifically for this album. What song do you think she should have covered? I want yours first. Okay, fine. I mean, for me,

it's a natural woman or unforgettable or my first last everything, the Barry White song. Because she basically did cover those songs in the course of this album. And she might as well just come out with it and do it. it, natural woman, the Aretha song, the Barry White song, or the Nat King Cole song. I'm good with any of those, but if we're going to, if we're going to quasi-interpolate, if we're going to drop this many hints, like, let's just, just give us your rendition. It's been long enough.

We're ready for somebody to tackle those songs. Okay. I love it. I would like to hear that. I think it would be good. I'm going to give you two. Okay. My real answer to this is...

Your real answer. Well, so I just kept going back and it's not, I don't know. The thing with I drink wine to me is it's super big, but I don't know that it's the biggest song in the album. It's really fun in certain parts, but I don't know that it's the most sort of up song in the album. Obviously at the end, she's talking about regret and all that stuff. Right. It's hard for me to identify what is it in here where it's like the best most superlative thing here. But what I kept coming back to is that very like Elton John, you're in the pub with your mates thing.

And there's something universal about it. So I would love to hear her do I want love. Which I think works thematically with this. And I think she would sound great. What a thoughtful couple of categories you've had. Here's the other one. Do you know the song Too Much by the Spice Girls? Yes.

How good would that be? be. Yeah, for a second, I thought you were going to say too much by Dave Matthews band. I was like, what?

We have our first Nathan Dave Matthews band reference of the pod. Jeez. By the spice girls, for sure. I mean, we know, look,

she projected herself, a picture of herself with the spice girls up on stage. She was deeply influenced by them. You know she can crush this.

I'm sure she sings that shit in the shower. Because, look, there are a big spice girls ballad, is relatively uncommon. Yeah.

But I would rather hear her do that song than, you know, stop. Or too much by Dave Matthews band. This is true. This is true. Well, that's a very thoughtful response. And it's in particular, you know, she's done a lot of classics.

And my suggestions were classics. She's done a Bob Dylan song. She's, you know, we've heard her do the Bonnie Raid song live. So on and so forth. I would love to hear her do a little bit more about her sort of more near-term influences. And so a spice girl song would make me very happy,

but I'm not sure we're going to get it. Same, same, same. Nora, I want to end by just asking you the question that we raised at the beginning. We're going to go on this journey together across four albums. We'll start with 19 to 21 to 25 and so forth. We have some more listening to do to really declare that.

But almost every single major reviewer of this album, from the New York Times to the LA Times to Rolling Stone 2-2-2-2, the Independent, all said, this is her best album yet. Now, that's a very subjective term and a subjective phrase. But as we sit here, 36 hours after this album came out, is this her best album yet? I think the answer is yes. I don't think her best song. song is on this album. I'm not sure what I think her best song is, honestly. And these are the questions that we're absolutely going to revisit at the end of this journey. But I think it is her best album. Well, that is very bad news for the rest of the Grammy category, because this woman has two album of the year Grammys. She is one of the only people ever to win all of the four major categories, including best album, best song, record, and best new artist.

So Grammys, Nora Princiani says, watch out. Wow. What a way to end, Nathan? What did you lay talking about Adele with you? I'm so excited to do it more. Much more ahead, Nora, thank you. I'm so excited to do it more. So today is Saturday, as we're recording this, this episode is going to be up. Later in the day, we're going to just live with 30 to get you guys three. Thanksgiving. And then on Monday the 29th, we're going to start our journey through Adele's

discography with 19. This has been every single album, Adele. I'm Nora Princeati. He's Nathan Hubbard. Thank you guys so much for listening. And extra thanks to Kaya McMullen for production support on this episode.