Would’ve been good if I’d managed to get this up before it left the top 40, but something tells me it might be back…
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[6.56]
Alex Macpherson: It’s almost a relief, after she briefly threatened to become interesting on her last single, to find Adele defaulting to dullness once again. Stripping “Someone Like You” down to just a solo piano backing at least removes the pallid sheen of overproduction, but its banal, uninsightful songwriting and aimlessly unmoving melody expose Adele as a fundamentally, deeply uninteresting artist. That a journeywoman like her gets the weight of the British music industry thrown behind her while, in the same ballpark, the exponentially more talented Jazmine Sullivan gets ignored, sums up everything rotten about major labels in 2011.
[4]
Jer Fairall: Easily the best thing on the predictably overcooked 21, this cinematic piano ballad proves, despite some professional assistance from Dan Wilson, what magic Adele is capable of when her army of producers and co-writers mostly just shut up and let her sing. Specifically, the way her voice dips, mournfully, during the second half of the line “I heard that your dreams came true” and cracks ever so slightly on the chorus’ “I beg,” as if ashamed at the in-the-moment realization that such naked vulnerability can be revealed in just two words. For once, though, words are as much a strong suit here as her voice, whether its in the scene-specific expositions of “you found a girl and you’re married now” and “I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited” or the painterly detail of “we were born and raised in a summer haze.” And what to make of “I remember you said, ‘sometimes it lasts in love and sometimes it hurts instead,” delivered first as a recollection of an ex-lover’s cruel kiss-off and then again as a sentiment that the speaker has come to find solace in upon years of reflection, indicated with nothing more than an offhand “yeah” tagged onto the end of the line? Well, let’s just say that “Someone Like You” constitutes something like a master class in the art of getting it right.
[9]
Anthony Easton: Stretched and constricted like a concertina, and founded on a bedrock of exquisite cocktail piano — more cabaret then soul, but it works wonders.
[8]
Jonathan Bogart: The new Queen of British Soul sings a Coldplay ballad, and almost pulls it off.
[6]
Josh Love: Having only a passing familiarity with her music, I’d always lumped in Adele with dull soul revivalists like Duffy and Winehouse who make their nostalgia-inducing signifiers do all the work. This is genuinely moving though, a true showstopping performance.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: Circa “Chasing Pavements”, Adele belted but she hadn’t felt. But she’s got smarter in the last few years. Firstly, “Someone Like You” is a much stronger song melodically and lyrically. Secondly, she delivers them with conviction presence with not a trace of that old standby emotion of “bittersweet” — her emotional shredding is deployed wisely and, most importantly, it’s earned. I love the juxtaposition of the song’s most hopeful lyrics over its most doomed melodic line. And finally, rather than a pancake of strings and percussion that there must have been pressure to stick on it, it’s just her and a piano. Stately, dignified, believable, beautiful.
[9]
Martin Skidmore: A slow piano number, with very simple backing, so success or failure is all down to her performance — which is, as usual, impressive, not just for her bluesy force but for her judgement of when to go into a pained higher register or a husky, almost growling tone. I don’t think the song amounts to much, though.
[7]
David Moore: Funereal piano could easily soundtrack some schmuck’s YouTube photo montage of himself aging for three years. At nearly five minutes this piece of schmaltz — in which grating soul mannerisms stand in for actual songwriting — is a seemingly endless exercise in shallow profundit-ry, too.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: Vocal restraint works nicely for Adele; this is sparse, pretty, and intermittently moving. In other words, faintly praised. I wish I knew what Adele could do to make me excited about her.
[6]