25

I like how she feels very sincere about what she’s singing. She has a good voice, too.

But I really dislike records like this where all the songs are vocal-forward and the lyrics are all about relationships and the music is just serving to emphasize the vocals. None of it is interesting to me. But I tried, I swear.

I think this album has a lot going for it. She's obviously a great singer and it's obvious that a lot of effort when into the entire writing and recording process. The end result clearly captured the hearts of a lot of people. The complaints I see in negative reviews seem a bit piddling and at times even spiteful.

Overhated, far from her best album but no where near as bad as RYM would have you believe. Hello really takes me back to a simpler time when that was the most popular meme format

Second half is a lot less interesting however

I’m blown away. I’m not a big pop music fan so I really haven’t heard any of her stuff. But I just told my wife, in a timeline that makes sense, Adele is the biggest woman pop star in the world, not the warm glass of milk that is Taylor Swift. Except…she only seems to make sad songs. So it starts to get a little same-y if you’re not actual depressed. Very impressed by this album. I probably won’t listen to the whole album again on my own, but I could see bringing up a couple of the songs when I’m in the mood.

182/1089 - Damn, I really hate her voice. Sounds like a woman version of Eddie Vedder. Not as bad as Kendrick Lamar or Ian Curtis I guess but that's not exactly a high bar. The instrumental is boring and lifeless relying too much on long pads with no real rhythmic variation or humanization of the sampled percussion. I think it sounds good in DAW music to slightly vary the velocities of the drums in a lot of music (not to mention the beat). If you don't do that then it sounds like I'm listening to some baby Nintendo MIDI or youtuber FL-studio-slop.

Non-list rec. Mockroot - Tigran Hamasyan (2015) Really cool modern jazz pianist with a very unique rhythmic language.

Tremendously talented singer. Great voice.

Adele is obviously a talented singer, but her music is melodramatic and overly sentimental to an annoying degree, and it's at its worst on this album. The song lyrics are predictable, I think "looking back on someone that they loved that they don't love anymore" could be used to describe half the songs on the album. There's one song that sounds like corporate music you'd hear for an IT company.

I'm not a big fan of Adele to begin with, but I have heard much better from her than anything on this.

Adele is an artist that i am very familiar with since a lot of her stuff played on the radio when i was a kid but i still wasn't expecting 25 to be this good. I have heard all the singles quite a lot on the radio and they are all good songs but here i found that even the regular album tracks were fantastic. Adele's singing combined with the instrumentals were absolutely great and could even be enough to nearly bring me to tears especially with the sadder lyrics. Even Send My Love (To Your New Lover) while feeling distracting at first, is a pretty nice break from the sadder stuff. The album may have dipped in quality a bit with the last 3 songs but other than that, this is an absolutely great album.
Best Song: River Lea
Worst Song: All I Ask

Fuck me. Please don't make me listen to this. I will give it a shot, but fuck me really?

OK, I will admit Hello is a good song. It's catchy. She actually sounds good. She doesn't belt like she wants to be Amy Winehouse. But aside from the very first song, I found the rest boring and not my type of music at all. This album sold tons of copies and people go apeshit over Adele for some reason as if she is Pavarotti or something. But I don't see the hype. I'm gonna go for two stars just because I did get Hello stuck in my head over the weekend, but the rest of the album is narcissistic pandering to the masses.

There’s a good chance you’ve heard the opening track “Hello” before, which has become a hallmark in Adele’s catalog with the spare piano and touches of reverb that build into a choir echoing into the emptiness. There’s also a good chance you’ve heard the next track “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” before, which is one of her weakest songs with the muffled stomp-clap beat that takes more focus than any semblance of melody. The fact these two are together sets the tone for how inconsistent this album is.

It’s not a bad album, but it’s pretty apparent how each song has a different producer, which leads to different vocal effects and instrumental compositions across the album. Adele has been at her best when the production is dark and gritty, and that’s not always what you get here.

This also translates to this album's vocal performance and lyrical themes, where it’s coming from a more mature perspective, reflecting on past relationships. She isn’t midway through a breakup like she was on 21, thus the framing would be different. But the songwriting hasn’t aged up with that maturity all the way through, and there is not as much raw power in the delivery. “Hello” and “Love in the Dark” are great songs, but you don’t quite get a “Rolling in the Deep” or “Set Fire to the Rain” here.

Overall, it’s a solid album that will get a recommendation, as there are good selections to be had here. I wish it were a little tighter and more focused.

Enjoyed this. 3.36

Has an album that promised so much ever delivered so painfully little? After the monster 21, it was always going to be a hard act to follow and while I openly adored 19 & 2, I listened to this once in 2015, the day it came out, and here we are just over 8 years later and I finally gave it my second proper listen and I'm still as let down as I was back when.

I hope we don't have to review 30 later on, because there's only so much I can bear, let's just pretend Adele blew her vocal chords completely out at that last note of her Albert Hall concert, never to sing again... Shall we?

Puede que sea el disco de Adele que menos me gusta. Aún así qué bien canta!!! No puedes negarlo. La cuestión es que la fama en general la hece menos disfrutable para mí.

Not really my thing personally if I'm being honest but I can still definitely respect her vocal talents and the songwriting quality of this album. I don't know if I'd seek it out but I wouldn't complain if it was on.