Adele – 25
Hello, is it her you’re looking for? Sales figures say yes.
She has measured out her life with coffee-table tunes: after 19 and 21, here is 25, another milestone in the now 27-year-old Adele Adkins MBE's successfully packaged emotional development. Never one for youthful giddiness, her third album is strikingly authoritative, tending towards the imperious even when expressing vulnerability yet rarely coming over as soullessly efficient. The regal piano balladry is forgettable – Remedy, for example – but there’s a welcome lighter touch on the whippy Send My Love (To Your New Lover), a bitter little song that cuts the prettiness of Wyclef’s Gone Till November with a dose of romantic bile. I Miss You, the most left-of-centre track, updates her classic collection with echoing vocals and pattering beats, while River Lea, a rolling churchy tribute to her neighbourhood produced by Danger Mouse, adds a pleasing geographical specificity to these big, universal songs. For Adele, 25 looks like being another very good year. Watch a live performance of When We Were Young...