There's a Fire Starting in my Heart

Adele has the kind of voice that all her contemporaries on the pop chart would kill for and couldn’t come close to with all the auto-tune in the world. But let’s face it; her debut album was a bit of a bore. The music she was singing over was so bland it might as well have been Musak. And so when the first single off her sophomore outing, Rolling in the Deep was released it instantly became her best song. The voice remained unmistakable, but production went to another level thanks to Paul Epworth (Florence + The Machine) with opening strumming of a guitar which adding a driving bass drum a couple lines later and turning into a full on foot stomping clap along by the bridge. Even her phrasing gets betters, when she says, “Don’t underestimate the things that I will do” you can’t help but believe her while chills go up your spine.

And that sophomore album 21 (she is keeping with the age of when she recorded the record theme from 19) continues the promise of Rolling in the Deep. After the album kicks off with the first single, it goes straight into Rumor Has It which could have been the most haunting song from the girl group era of the sixties. Then out of nowhere the song slows down for a even more haunting piano accompanying part before picking right back up again.

Aside from Rolling in the Deep, Epworth helped write two of the best songs on the album. I’ll Be Waiting opens with an Elton John flair on piano before being joined by some horns and is easily the most fun you will have listening to Adele and listening to the song makes you wonder why she doesn’t go up tempo more often. He Won’t Go starts off with the beat and piano riff from The Roots version of Dear God before morphing into a soft rock R&B song from the eighties without managing to sound cheesy.

Rick Rubin, who produced four of the tracks, goes for the less is more approach he took when guiding Johnny Cash’s American records. Don’t You Remember and One and Only are the songs on the new albums most reminiscent of her previous album. And where Rubin made an art of picking cover songs for Cash, having Adele cover Love Song by The Cure with an acoustic bossa nove twinge just doesn’t reach the highs she had when she reworked To Make You Feel My Love by Bob Dylan on her last album which is the only advance 19 has over 21.

Song to Download – I'll Be Waiting

21 gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.