Last week was something of a behemoth in terms of new album releases. Justin Bieber, One Direction, and 21 other artists unleashed their creations, for good and for bad, upon the world. This week, though, could be fairly accurately summarised with a picture of tumbleweed. The reason? No-one is foolish enough to compete with Adele.
After 21 became, gradually and all at once, the biggest selling album of the 21st century, Adele slunk back into the shadows of north London. "I don't want to say something for the sake of it," she told Nick Grimshaw. "I've had nothing to say, so why am I going to say anything?"
Now though, after four years of silence (as a musician, that is - we can't imagine Adele the person being silent for more than a matter of minutes) Adele finally has something to say. On Friday, the world's anxious wait for 25 will be over. And no-one is more aware of the impossibly large shoes the album has to fill than Adele herself.
"Every album I'm ever going to write is always going to be following 21," she admitted on Radio 1. "No matter what this record does, my next record's going to be following 21. It's an album that - it was phemonenal what happened with that, but it is a phenomenon, so I can't really include it in any expectations of anything I ever do again."
Watch the video for 'Hello' below
With 25, though, she's managed to follow up, with disarming ease, an album that's impossible to follow. Treading a line between optimism, nostalgia and a new-found sense of autonomy (for better and worse) 25 beds itself down in the shadow of its predecessor. There was nowhere else it could possibly have gone - but it's comfortable, perhaps even happy, there.
'Send My Love (To Your New Lover)' is a playful sigh of relief that shakes off the heartbroken cobwebs of 21 - "we've got to let go of all of our ghosts". Soon, though, she's crept back into melancholic territory, with an album that aches with nostalgia for the simplicity of youth.
'Million Years Ago', for example, hearkens back to the acoustic balladry of Adele's early material, and lyrically, once again, it hearkens back to a past that she feels slipping away from her. "I feel like my life is flashing by / And all I can do is watch and cry / I miss the air, I miss my friends." It's stark and heartbreaking.
No album, surely, is ever quite going to compare to 21, either in terms of commercial or critical success. But if anyone can give Adele a run for her money, it's Adele.
25 is set for release on Friday (20 November). See the full list of album releases this week below.
Adele - 25
Arca - Mutant
Enya - Dark Sky Island
Freddie Gibbs - Shadow of a Doubt
Magic Circle - Journey Blind
Martin Crane - Physical Therapy
Roger Waters - The Wall
