Writing on his website, Joe Jackson does a monthly “blog” talking about some of the music that he’s listening to.
His current prose covers the latest Adele single “Hello”. Maybe a little surprising coming from Joe Jackson but I think he’s got it bang on….
“ADELE: Hello
By the time you read this, Adele’s new album will have been released, and there will be no escape. There will be no remote Pacific island, no benighted Congo village, no igloo in Greenland, where it won’t be on the radio every hour. The statistics will pile on top of the already staggering ones she amassed the last time around. The number of audiocassettes sold in Indonesia alone, if placed end to end, would stretch all the way to the planet Neptune, etc etc.
More power to her, I say. While one person sneers (on principle!) at popularity and embraces anything obscure, another does the exact opposite – and they’re both wrong. Sometimes an artist comes along who is both popular and really good. What do you say to that, eh, you clever bastards?
I first heard this song in a supermarket in Antwerp and thought, that must be Adele’s new single, it sounds pretty good. Two days later I heard it loud, in the back of a taxi, and I swear I had a lump in my throat by the time it ended. I’ve never been a fan of the Power Ballad as strenuously performed by the likes of Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, or Mariah Carey. But Adele is different. How can I put it? She’s not trying . . . she just is. She reminds me of Orson Welles. Bear with me here for a minute. Welles said in one interview that he realized early on, that for better of worse, he was a King Actor. Apparently there were, in the time of Shakespeare, actors who were known as King Actors because they had a certain stature, and charisma, and a natural ‘bigness’ – not just physical – that made them unsuited to smaller ‘character’ roles. Nor would they be convincing as either the villain of the piece or the Fool. They could play a good or a bad king, or a king with human flaws, but they had to be The King.
Adele is a Queen Singer, and I think what makes her so appealing is not originality (she’s actually something of a throwback, and reminds me of Etta James mixed with a little bit of Ella Fitzgerald) but her realness: she really does have a huge voice and a huge talent, and she really does mean what she’s singing, and this is just what she does. She’s down-to-earth in a very English way. Those American divas all sound like they’ve been brought up, in true American style, to believe they are truly special, and the prettiest girl in the class, and if they only believe in themselves, and follow their dreams, they can be anything their hearts desire, grow up to be President, save the starving children of Africa, defy gravity, never die, blah blah blah, pass the barf bag. Whereas Adele says things like, I’d rather have lunch with me mates than go to a gym, and then she goes and sings her heart out and puts them all to shame.
God Save the Queen.”
I don’t think he’s right lumping Whitney in with the rest of the divas. I didn’t/don’t particularly like her music, but she had one helluva great, authentic voice. Personally, I find Adele’s faux-American twang and curious enunciation of certain words phoney and off-putting.
Whether or not you like her music, she is keeping the music business alive. Things would be a lot worse without her.
Fascinating* statistic: of 800,307 first-week album sales, 548,000 were physical format.
(*) If you’re a nerd, like wot I is.
I don`t have a problem with this `Adele` because I`ve never heard her, no honestly I`ve never knowingly heard any of her songs and I probably never will. I don`t frequent places that would play her music and it dosen`t get played in my home. Good luck to her and as fentonsteve says her album sales keep the industry ticking over because you lot keep pinching music on`t net, ; ))
‘Adele’
Having read his book and a few articles on his website, I reckon Joe Jackson is a top bloke.
And he’s right about Adele.
A Cure for Gravity – the best and most enjoyable rock autobiography I’ve ever read; highly recommended. I think he’s great as well and trust he will be doing more UK live dates in 2016 than the paltry few currently on sale.
I agree with you Raymond – well said.
I really liked her first album before it became ubiquitous. I have tried with the new one but I couldn’t disagree more with Honest Joe – “Hello” is appalling screechy mid-Atlantic power-ballad bollox
Totally agree. First two albums were fine. Rolling In The Deep was a great song. But Hello is the sort of over the top caterwauling you get on X Factor.
Agree on both counts. Rolling in the Deep is a great song. They used it on an advertisement for some upcoming TV show and I’d never heard that song before and the ad was on high-rotation I remember thinking “I’m not going to watch that show but what is that song?” I was so curious I actually googled the answer.
More recently I was in a car with someone of the “buys one cd a year” variety and we were talking and she shooshed me and said, “This must be Adele’s new single” So we listened to Hello and when it as over she said, “Is that it?” I still think it underwhelming
I don’t think she was impressed.
There is absolutely no point in anyone here making comment on Adele.
So here’s mine..
She is streets ahead of those who are seen as her peers, she has a great voice and puts her stuff out there…. Shedloads of folks buy…. Respect to the lass.
I’m still un-pc enough to say I’m proud that she is British with ‘working class’ roots.
Cor blimey! Apples and pears! Struth! Me old man’s a dustman! WTF is Joe Jackson goin’ on Abahhtt! This is not progress. This is re-hashed dressed -up Karakoe.
Like @baron-harkonnen above I have never knowingly heard Adele and had little interest in altering that state of affairs. The Joe Jackson piece may well tempt me to head over to Spotify to give it a go, I see that “Hello” has had over 217,000,000 plays, I might give it a go, later…
I had a dream in which Adele put out a song with Katy Tempest and Joanna Newsom and half the Afterword spontaneously combusted.
I can’t be doing with this modern pop rubbish! I prefer the proper, authentic music of me youth… Madonna, Depeche Mode, Eurhythmics, Michael Jackson, Frankie Goes To Hollywood… You wouldn’t catch those guys messing about with synthesizers and studio technology! Never any danger that their music would get samey… You could barely predict what they’d do next! Plus, it was all live in them days! The world has gone to the dogs, I tells you…
Adele’s music is OK. I wouldn’t actively seek it out but it doesn’t send me screaming from the room either (unlike, say, the Eastenders theme). In that sense, it’s one of the large and growing number of things that I find I just don’t have a strong opinion about. Or any opinion at all, really.
Joe Jackson, on the other hand, I do find engaging. I hope be writes another volume of autobiography – the last one finished just as things started to get really interesting.
Now this is an Afterword T-Shirt …….
“Sometimes an artist comes along who is both popular and really good. What do you say to that, eh, you clever bastards?”