After six years since her last album, Adele released her newest 12-track album, 30, at the end of 2021. It focuses on divorce, motherhood, and the scrutiny of the music industry. 

Track No. 3, My Little Love, features Adele having a conversation with her 9-year-old son, Angelo. It also has a short feature of a voicemail Adele left for her best friend to display the emotions she was experiencing with the divorce. 

“I’m having a bad day, I’m having a very anxious day. I feel very paranoid, I feel very stressed.” 

• My Little Love, voicemail featured at 3:37

Track 2, Easy On Me, managed to hold the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s “The Hot 100” for seven weeks and has remained on the chart for the past 12 weeks. It was the first song released as a single on Oct. 15th, a month prior to the release of the full album. It is the most streamed song from Adele’s album. 

The songs and album fall under a few different genres: pop, soul, and jazz.

On Nov. 19, Adele took to Instagram to announce and honor the arrival of her new album.

“It was a ride, so I threw my arms up and screamed! Love you all,” she said in the post’s caption.

30 managed to be the biggest-selling album of 2021, even with the late release into the year. 

Just after the release of the album, Spotify made a change to the automatic shuffle play rule when listening to albums on the app. Album tracks won’t be shuffled out of order like they had been before, instead playing in the order the artist had put them in.

Adele made a response tweet on Twitter to the change Spotify had made. 

“This was the only request I had in our ever-changing industry! We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason,” she said, encouraging fans to listen to the album in order the first listen-through. 

She ended the post by explaining how the art itself tells a story and the story should be listened to as intended by the artist. 

The Buccaneer rates Adele’s 30, a 6 out of 10. The songs are all different and catchy, an altogether great album, but it is a one-time listen. It isn’t an album that would not necessarily be put on repeat. It brings forth the downsides of divorce and is a great representation for the subject.