YMMV / Adele

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is "Someone Like You" a touching song about accepting the person you love is moving on (though her true inspiration is her cheating boyfriend), or is the song a textbook example of Suspiciously Specific Denial? The latter is popular, earning Adele memes of her being portrayed as a Clingy Jealous Girl and stalker.
  • Is the woman from "Hello" a ghost, singing to a lost lover who is still in the living world? "Hello/From the other side..." takes on a whole new meaning.
    • Or, inversely, is the woman being delusional about her former lover being dead?
  • One interpretation from college students in Oklahoma states that "Hello" normalizes stalking exes.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Someone Like You", and every live performance of it.
  • "Set Fire to the Rain" is pretty good, too.
  • "Skyfall", her theme for the James Bond movie of the same name. Listen to it here.
  • And for a song that doesn't start with "S", "Hello".
• Broken Base: Adele lost a lot of weight over 2019/2020. This caused some disagreement.
  • On the one hand: adopting a more conventional body image is a betrayal of the "body positive" movement that she was implicitly supporting by being a Big Beautiful Woman.
  • On the other hand: her body, her choice; and being overweight has a number of undesirable health consequences.
• Epic Riff:
  • A very quiet one from "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)."
  • The piano on "Someone Like You."
  • "Rolling In The Deep".
• Even Better Sequel:
  • 19 was given good reviews on its release, but the critical and commercial reception of 21 was much higher.
  • This continued with 25. While it has received some harsh criticism (especially from the Beyhive due to a perceived Award Snub at the Grammys), the album proved to be even more successful while maintaining similar acclaim and performing a clean sweep at the Grammys, winning every nom it received (including all three major categories).
• Fandom Rivalry: Her fans vs. Taylor Swift fans.
  • The Adele/Swifties feud seems to have died down just in time for the Beyhive to go after her fans in full force due to the debatable Award Snub at the 2017 Grammys. Neither side is backing down at all.
• Funny Moments:
  • Adele Carpool Karaoke.
  • Having Sir David Attenborough narrate the opening two minutes of the "Hello" video is insane enough.
• Genre Turning Point: The massive success of her second album, 21, single-handedly changed the landscape of pop music, with the absolute collapse of club music and bringing back R&B and neo-soul genre to the mainstream.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: She's just as big, if not bigger, in the U.S. as she is in her native UK.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "Love in the Dark" is a deeply melancholy song about a failing relationship. A sad song in its own right, but all the more sad given Adele divorced from her husband but three years later.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: 25 got a lot of this from the harsher critics.
• Memetic Badass: The "cocaine ninja" in the video for "Rolling in the Deep." It's actually a woman dancing in flour.
• Memetic Mutation: This joke.
• Narm Charm: Her songs sound incredibly whiny, but her voice is amazing enough to potentially make you believe every word she's singing.
• Signature Song: "Rolling in the Deep", "Someone Like You", "Set Fire To The Rain", and, as of 2015, "Hello".
• Spiritual Successor:
  • To Amy Winehouse. Also recognized as spiritual successor to Dame Shirley Bassey at the 2013 Oscars due to her success with the theme from Skyfall. She herself openly loathes this notion, however, claiming that she only shares with other British singers like Amy the "gender, not the genre".
  • For her own songs, "Hello" to "Someone Like You" and "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" to "Rumor Has It".

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