Adele’s first single in five years, “Easy On Me,” did pretty well for itself in just its first day. Within the first 24 hours, her song broke Spotify’s streaming records, successfully overturning the 11 million streams reached by popular K-pop boy band, BTS.
This track is the first release from her forthcoming album, 30, and it expressly deals with the painful topic of divorce, as she finalized her separation from her husband of seven years.
This track is both honest and painful, and it seems to be directed at Adele’s ex-husband. However, there are moments when it could just as easily be a future message for her 9-year-old son, Angelo, whom she shares with him.
She admits that she really wanted to make her marriage work, although she recognizes that the sentiment “probably doesn’t even show” as things have now ended “in this river/That I’ve been washing my hands in forever.”
Adele says that she feels she was “drowning” in the “silence” of her marriage, as neither party felt there was “room for change,” when they were “both so deeply stuck in [their] ways.”
She says that perhaps this outcome is due to the fact that she was “still a child” that “didn’t get to feel the world around me” as she married young. A large part of her feels that she “had no time to choose what [she] chose to do.” So, she asks her listener to go “easy” on her.
For anyone who has walked the painful road through divorce, this song may be both comforting and painful. It’s painful in that Adele expresses that she tried to fix her marriage but, in the end, it felt hopeless as both parties weren’t willing to change their habits and patterns. But it’s comforting in that Adele expresses feelings that so many others have felt. This song wrestles with emotions that are difficult to process and even harder to articulate.
As a positive, there is no profanity here and no promiscuous language. But divorce–so often an avoidable tragedy–is a difficult, mature subject that should be approached with great care and concern.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
