So powerful. Wikipedia has a thorough page on the song. Here’s Adele speaking about the inspiration of the song:

We were so intense I thought we would get married. But that was something he never wanted …So when I found out he does want that with someone else, it was just the horrible-est feeling ever. But after I wrote it, I felt more at peace. It set me free.

This is one of those songs that is so good that, along with all the joy and visualizing it inspires, it’s also discouraging. You realize, if you like to make music yourself, that you might not ever be able to make a song this good.

But also, there is no musician who can pump out songs like this routinely. This is the kind of caliber song that most musicians never even achieve (concise, gemlike, zeitgeist vibe, etc). When it does happen, as it has here, you have to think that luck played a big part. Of being able to have access to your tools right at that moment of fleeting inspiration when you’re unconsciously channeling something. And even so, there is so often so much loss of fidelity in that conversion from what you hear in your head to what you end up being able to record. It might end up being a huge letdown and you lose steam and the song never happens. But then sometimes you get that initial feeling, you’re able to faithfully render it into sound, and then you find yourself further inspired within this new world of sound you’ve started to create. And that’s when it really lifts off.

LOVE this song. I had it on repeat for about two hours earlier today. Love how though it’s mainly electronic with the arranged voice samples, drum machines, and synths, it still sounds human and natural. A little sloppy and loose in all the right ways. It’s also a great music video too. Be fun to be at a club when this song starts playing and go crazy in the middle of the floor: feeling the mass of human rhythm around you, the way everyone seems to move slowly in unison when you’re not focusing on anyone. But focusing on one person you’re reminded of how good music can make dancing people so intriguing.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

-Albert Einstein

This would have to be done while tired, going on like 3 hours sleep and lots of coffee. Walking around downtown all day, in and out of buildings, up and down stairs. Would have to be done in spring. This is what people should be doing between the ages of 18 and 24. Urban appreciation, experiential grasps of historocity. The smells and sounds of each building. The cramped wooden staircase squeezed into the corner of the 30 story building from the early 1900s, creaky stairs, big lead glass windows looking out onto the turquoise spring street at every other flight. The railings stopped needing to be restained years ago. They’re amply oiled up daily by the palms of officeworkers in the thrum of paperwork and due date anxiety.

A pleasing thing is freely moving in and out of these environments, being in such a different mental state. Like when you’re off on a work day and there you are spacing out at home while your fellow humans toil around you.

I buy my last 20 ounce coffee at 4 P.M., finish it by 5 P.M. I walk another five or so miles around the city, stop in a couple more random buildings as the sun goes down. Then I return to the hotel and kick off my shoes and feel the blisters all over my feet and the sweat on my clothes and I lie back on the bed. Scoot up so my head’s against the pillow, turn on the TV. Space out as I flip through the channels.