Stop Sleeping - Adele's 19

2011 was Adele’s year. Her sophomore album, 21, is probably still topping the charts, and as a result she’s the only artist to ever sell 3 million albums in the UK in a year. To do that in the middle of the internet age is remarkable. She is the first artist to chart two top 5 singles and two top 5 albums simultaneously since 1964, when the Beatles did it. 21 is the longest running number one album by a UK female solo artist ever. She’s also pretty good at singing.

So inevitably, once people played 21 through for the hundredth time, they were looking for more. In the UK, these rational people simply went out and bought 19 if they hadn’t heard it before. In the states, people had a tendency to ask me questions. “How is her first album?” “Is it like 21?” “Will I like it?” “Does it have Chasing Pavements on it?” None of these questions were important, but I answered them just the same, and sent everybody I could convince on a mission to grab the record.

The answers to these questions tended to vary. I consistently talked up her debut album this year, but felt it necessary to attach words like youthful, basic, and simple to my descriptions. While I feel like 19 was a great album, something went down with Adele Adkins in the two years between releases. 21 was a deep, often gut-wrenching experience for listeners, because of how intense the songwriting is on it. Adele’s first record is poppier, and more of a showcase for her talent than a statement of who she is as an artist or a person. It seems engineered for a wide appeal, whereas 21 was a more genuine experience that ended up drawing a huge audience as a result. Two different approaches, with a similar outcome.

So no, it’s not like 21. Not really. This is Bridget Jones Diary music. Quirky, fat-girl pop with a couple slow joints thrown in to show us a serious side. This is a quintessential blue-eyed soul record for all the qualities, good and bad, that phrase conjures up. In a lot of ways, I prefer it. It’s a great “city” album, from the perspective of a sentimental, fresh-on-the-scene Adele. Someone who has given up on where she came from, and feels a bit exposed out there now that she’s broken in to the real world. She seems a little scared, a little overwhelmed, and she’s decided she has no recourse other than singing about it. 19 is a more innocent experience and the naivety is downright charming.

Whether or not an individual person will like 19 is a tricky one. In a couple specific cases, my answer was a resounding “no.” If you ask somebody what they like about 21, they’d better say her voice, and not Someone Like You. There’s nothing anywhere near that smart or seasoned on Adele’s first record. Generally speaking, it’s much more of an Amy Winehouse emulation than it is anything else, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s Back to Black without the dark humor or Mark Ronson, which Adkins couldn’t have pulled off anyway at that age.

And yes, it has Chasing Pavements on it. Which, for those who are unfamiliar, is a song about walking down sidewalks or something, and it was a massive hit. It has a very strange video. In it, a couple roll around on a sidewalk after they’ve been murdered. I’m not really clear on what’s happening, to be perfectly honest. What struck me about Adele during the Chasing Pavements era was what she put on the B-side: That’s It, I Quit, I’m Moving On, a Sam Cooke cover. In the world of Sam Cooke joints, it’s a bit of a deep cut, and a slightly odd choice. She kills it though, and won a lot of points from me in the process. (Which should be your first priority as an up and coming artist.)

This is one of the things I really love about Adele. She’ll cover shit that you’ve either never heard of, or think she can’t really get away with, and then blow your mind. She did a cover of Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now, which is that turd of a song you had to hear fifteen times if you watched last year’s Grammys. She paired up with Hootie, of all people, and rocked it. So much so that the performance got nominated for a CMT award. Think about that. A Brit and a black dude named Darius got nominated for a Country Music Television award. Granted, it was performed at those very awards, but I still think it’s noteworthy. They’ve come a long way over at that network.

This all may have come across as some sort of trendslut, anti-Adele backlash bullshit, but I honestly enjoy her freshman album quite a bit. When a record makes as big of a splash as 21 did, both in the world and with me personally, I think it’s important to investigate where the artist behind it is coming from. The progression between records is exactly the same as what happened with Lykke Li this year, and is also what made Wounded Rhymes such an interesting listen. This was also a huge record, just with a more circuitous path to platinum. Obviously most of 19’s sales came in 2011, on the heels of one of the biggest UK records in history, but the record is not without merit. Anybody interested in Adele or blue-eyed soul as a genre should check this record out. I highly recommend it. And it’s been out for years now, you should all probably stop sleeping on it as soon as possible.