Authors-choice: Hope & Revival

Music lovers the world over are hailing Adele Laurie Blue Adkins’ new album, 25 as a great success.  Her debut album in 2008, won numerous awards including a Grammy for best New Artist. Her second album, 21, in 2011 sold over 30million copies  and was the UK’s fourth best selling album of all time and had her listed at number five on VH1’s 100 Greatest Women in Music.

25 is Adele’s third studio album. It was released in November 2015 and the lead single, “Hello” released earlier in October 2015 has already been viewed over half a billion times on YouTube and  a worldwide number-one hit and became the first song to sell over one million digital copies within a week of its release in the US

With a stunning cinematography and vocals resonating with emotions, “Hello” is a song about a woman trying to get back in touch with a man whose heart she had broken many years ago. This song hints at a truth that is hidden the hearts of many of us.

Deep in our hearts, we know that to heal a world filled with broken hearts and wrecked relationships, we must learn to forgive and ask for forgiveness. With more than  500,000 divorces in the US alone, an incredible  selfishness has engulfed  many people’s lives and this song is telling  people to make the effort to reconnect,  to say sorry, to apologize and make up for all the wrongs.

Adele, herself, knows all the hurts of divorce. Her father, Mark Evans left when she was two, leaving her 20-year-old mother to raise her single-handedly. She knows how much suffering she could have been spared if only Papa knew how to say hello, how to say, I am sorry.

Adele is unafraid of being herself. Criticized by celebrities such as Karl Lagerfeld and Joan Rivers for her weight, Adele said that she is happy with her weight   “I like looking nice, but I always put comfort over fashion. I don’t find thin girls attractive; be happy and healthy. I’ve never had a problem with the way I look. I’d rather have lunch with my friends than go to a gym.”  She scorns the modern pop culture that is driving an appalling numbers of girls into starving themselves, bingeing and purging, mutilating their bodies all in other to look beautiful, to be accepted.

In her music videos we see none of the shameless nudity so prevalent in MTV music videos such as Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking ball”. Nudity and utter animalistic immodesty- on- steroids so often on display in music videos these days are not only an assault on minors who might be watching, but also an assault on our shared human culture which is gradually being transformed to an animal one.

Animals do not need modesty because they neither think nor love. But modesty is important in human society; it brings out the best in everyone. Modest female singers like Adele make womanliness attractive once more in a transcendent kind of way.

The secret that make Adele’s music videos so alluring is that breath of fresh air, that sweet whiff of the nobility we once had and but lost. Adele’s fashionable modesty is ultimately more erotic than Miley Cyrus licentiousness. Men are more excited, by the twinkling eyes and the slender ankle peeking out from the long skirt than they are by casually exposed body parts and effortless conquests in the sack. She is mischievous and modest in her music videos and her modesty is the logical consequence of her having personal dignity even as she refuses to unveil what should remain hidden.

Then again, she is not only unafraid of being herself, she is unafraid of having children, an aspect of womanhood most denigrated and scoffed by high society women.

In 2013, when Adele won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the James Bond theme, “Skyfall” thinking it her proudest moment of her life, and thinking  it best to quit when the ovation was loudest, she decided to leave the music industry.  Her son’s coming of age changed her mind. She said her son inspired her to start recording music again in order for him to “know what I do”.

Always inspired by her motherhood, she praised Madonna’s, Ray of Light, as her best album because Madonna sang it when she was a mother.

Adele is a hardworking courageous artist who writes her own songs, taking pains to be original. After her second album, she struggled with a writer’s block for 2 years that could have destroyed lesser songwriters and her victory is a ray of hope for many artists hopelessly gripped by block and self doubt

Adele was given her first recording contract by XL Recordings after a friend helpfully posted her demo on MySpace. Now she tries to reciprocate by helping other people. She gives regular free concerts to raise money for the less privileged and makes no discrimination of any kind on the grounds of race or color or class.

Article written by Chinwuba Iyizoba, Editor of Authors-choice