Songs to download: ‘Hello,’ ‘Water Under the Bridge,’ ‘When We Were Young’

This holiday season, be thankful for Adele and her ability to make you feel nostalgic for people and emotions you didn’t even know you had. You’ll find yourself belting out ballads about love and heartbreak like you wrote the lyrics yourself. And you will be grateful that Adele is always there to sing the song of your heart, so you don’t have to.

From “Hello,” the first track on “25,” Adele’s third studio album, she invokes the beautiful and haunting melodies that have become synonymous with Adele herself. This first song, which was also the first single released off of the new album, sets up the nostalgic tone that continues for the entire album.

“Hello” reaches out to an ex-lover long after the relationship has ended. Now on the “other side,” Adele tries to once again reach out to the ex and belts, “To tell you I’m sorry, for breaking your heart.” Adele’s location in this song – “the other side” – isn’t specific to “Hello,” but, in fact, finds its way into most of the tracks on the album. Adele has always come across as mature, both in her lyrics and presence as a performer, but now 27 years old and a mother herself, she has stepped into her mid 20s with poise, grace and the ability to look back on her younger self with the clarity that translates into eleven tracks of modern maturity.

The album’s nostalgia comes through in the soulful style of the music itself—a departure from the upbeat pop music that dominates the Top 40 radio stations—as well as in the lyrics. In “River Lea,” Adele admits that she “can’t go back” to the River Lea (a Thames tributary in England) and in “Million Years Ago,” she admits “I miss it when/Life was a party to be thrown/But that was a million years ago.”

Nostalgia is most present on “When We Were Young,” the album’s fourth track. Here, Adele laments, “This reminds me/Of when we were young… We were sad of getting old/It made us restless.” The past is idealized and there is a fear of getting old and what is to come. In fact, she sings, “I’m so mad I’m getting old.”

Much of the lyrics on this track and others seem to fondly look back on youth and worry about the present and the future. On “All I Ask,” she asks, “What if I never love again?” and on “River Lea” she expresses doubts about who she is now. If you want to sit and think about everything you should have done but didn’t, give tracks “I Miss You,” “River Lea,” and “Million Years Ago” a good listen.

But this album is not just the past or how you can never be who you used to be. It also celebrates growing into one’s self and allows Adele to have a little bit of fun. On track two, “Send My Love (To Your Lover),” she sings, “We both know we ain’t kids no more,” a sentiment that is more than expressed in the other tracks, but this one comes wrapped in a more fun and upbeat track, where Adele celebrates moving on. “Remedy” also diverges from nostalgic Adele and expresses a desire to be someone’s remedy to his or her pain.

My favorite tracks on “25” are “Hello,” “When We Were Young” and, finally, “Water Under the Bridge.” The first two had been released with music videos before the album came out, and the latter will also get its own music video shortly, as the teaser has been released.

“Water Under the Bridge” departs from the slow ballads that populate the album and makes you feel like you are also stuck in a relationship because someone won’t let the relationship die. Throughout a listen to “25,” it’s easy to get pulled into the emotion of the songs and to look back on your own life and relationships through an Adele-lens.

Will “25” inspire you to call your ex this Thanksgiving and apologize, or will you just let it be water under the bridge? Better yet, just let Adele do it for you and spend your holiday break listening to “25” on repeat.