Adele didn’t go easy on us when she released her highly anticipated, heartfelt fourth studio album 30 on Friday (Nov. 19), via Melted Stone and Columbia Records.
Throughout the 12-track album, the queen of heartbreak anthems licks the wounds from her divorce with ex-husband Simon Konecki, salvages herself with copious amounts of wine, and holds onto the one thing she’ll never lose: herself.
Lead single “Easy on Me” has spent the last four consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts. Adele performed “Easy on Me” and three more songs from 30 — “I Drink Wine,” “Hold On” and “Love is a Game” — during her CBS primetime television special Adele: One Night Only, which averaged 9.92 million viewers, per time-zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen. On social media Wednesday, Adele shared a six-minute video of herself belting “To Be Loved” from her living room, and it certainly left everyone in a puddle of their own tears.
30 is the long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s 25, which had a record-smashing first week after selling 3.38 million copies in its debut week in the U.S. That was the biggest sales week of an album since Nielsen (now MRC Data) began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991. 25 spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won Grammy Awards for album of the year and best pop vocal album of the year.
Listen to 30 below.
