Watch Adele’s Mournful Video for New Song ‘Hello’
Singer ponders the aftermath of a failed relationship in debut ’25’ single
Adele has debuted the mournful, evocative video for “Hello,” the singer’s first single off her upcoming album, 25.
Directed by Xavier Dolan, “Hello” was shot in Montreal’s countryside and finds the singer in the immediate aftermath of a messy breakup. After losing a signal while talking to her ex on the phone, Adele enters a dusty, old house to try and make sense of a chaotic, still-fresh romantic wound. It’s the first music video to ever be shot in IMAX.
The video mirrors the elegiac track, which finds Adele singing, “Hello, it’s me/I was wondering if after all these years, you’d like to meet/To go over everything/ They say that time’s supposed to heal you/But I ain’t done much healing” over a minimalist ballad.
“This song was a massive breakthrough to me with my writing because I’ve been pretty slow up until this point,” the singer told SiriusXM. “After this, it all poured out of me.”
Produced by Greg Kurstin, “Hello” is Adele’s first release since 2012’s “Skyfall,” the Academy Award-winning theme song for the James Bond film of the same name. Rumors swirled about 25‘s release in early 2014, though a financial report from her label XL Recordings revealed that the highly-anticipated follow-up to her record-breaking sophomore release 21 would not be ready by the end of the year. The album is set for release on November 20th.
Adele first hinted at new music in early October through a commercial during the U.K. version of The X Factor. The commercial only contained 30Â seconds of “Hello” and the lyrics of the snippet being played across a black screen. She followed up the surprise commercial with an open letter to her fans explaining that the album was delayed because “life happened.”
“My last record was a break-up record and if I had to label this one, I would call it a make-up record,” she wrote. “Making up for lost time. Making up for everything I ever did and never did. Turning 25 was a turning point for me, slap bang in the middle of my twenties. Teetering on the edge of being an adolescent and a fully fledged adult.”
