Of course, Adele herself would beg to differ. She told Vanity Fair in 2015 that she considers herself more of a “wailer” than a “singer” (especially compared with her idols like Stevie Nicks, Bette Midler and Beyoncé), adding, “I swear to God I laugh at every big thing that happens in my career. I laugh out loud because I think it’s f***in’ ridiculous. At some point, the director of The Truman Show is going to come and say this is a sequel.” Her music has grown with her as a person, seeing her through marriage, motherhood, and now divorce (from husband and father of her son, Angelo, Simon Konecki) and finding new love with Rich Paul. Of course, just because Adele herself doesn’t believe the hype about he talent doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Now that she’s put out 30, which loads of fans and critics are calling her most towering musical achievement yet, her are our picks for the 25 best Adele songs, but remember, the bar is set somewhere in the stratosphere—so do yourself a favor and just treat yourself to her entire catalog if you haven’t already.
25 Best Adele Songs
1. “Rolling in the Deep”
It’s rare for a breakup song to bring us to church, but the gospel tinges in “Rolling in the Deep” make it as haunting and beautiful as it is catchy and scathing towards Adele’s mysterious ex. She reportedly wrote the song with producer Paul Epworth in a single afternoon following a split from her then-boyfriend. That was a heartbreak that paid off in a big way: The song sold nearly 21 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the biggest selling digital singles of all time, and won Grammys for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Short Form Music Video.
2. “When We Were Young”
Adele’s soaring ballad made her weep during recording. Producer Ariel Rechtshaid admitted to The Fader, “I think it’s an emotional song for her so I’m not gonna give it to the production, but there was definitely a little bit of tearing up. I think it might have been a relief as well that the song came out well. That can be a stressful thing, when you’re putting the production in someone else’s hands and just hoping that it captures the right feeling. It takes trust, and it’s also a hard thing to communicate.”
3. “Cry Your Heart Out”
A departure from her usual form, “Cry Your Heart Out” features Adele in full girl-group glory as she self-flagellates following a breakup. Largely inspired by her divorce from Simon Konecki, she sings, “I can’t get no relief / I’m so tired of myself / I swear I’m dead in the eyes / I have nothin’ to feel no more / I can’t even cry.”
4. “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”
This poppy midtempo number, produced by Max Martin, was a welcome departure from Adele’s typical torch songs and dripping with sass as she addresses a man who couldn’t handle her: “I was too strong you were trembling / You couldn’t handle the hot heat rising…I was running, you were walking / You couldn’t keep up, you were falling down.” She embraced the song, which she called “a bit of fun,” explaining, “You ain’t got to be dark all the time!”
5. “Make You Feel My Love”
Adele covered Bob Dylan’s classic ballad and made it sound like it was written just for her.
6. “Someone Like You”
“Someone Like You,” an ode to an ex who’s long since moved on even though she hasn’t, was a massive hit for Adele in 2011. It earned the singer her first No. 1 single in her native U.K. (though it seems insane that it took that long) and was the first song to be awarded the Best Pop Solo Performance Grammy in 2012. It’s the fourth-best selling single of the century and the third most downloaded song ever in the U.K.
7. “I Drink Wine”
While #WineMoms may think “I Drink Wine” is an anthem for imbibing, the tune is actually about how she quit drinking. “I stopped drinking. That’s one great way of really sort of getting to know yourself, is just drinking water and being sober as anything,” she told Oprah Winfrey in her One Night Only special, noting that she had a complicated relationship with alcohol because of how it affected her relationship (or lack thereof) with her father.
8. “Rumour Has It”
Similar to “Send My Love (To Your New Lover),” “Rumour Has It” evokes vintage girl groups and Dusty Springfield’s blue-eyed soul in its arrangements. The song went double platinum, possibly at the expense of some of her own pals: She said of the song’s inspiration, “People might think it’s about blogs and magazines and papers, but it’s not. It’s about my own friends believing stuff that they hear about me, which is pretty mortifying really.”
9. “Chasing Pavements”
“Chasing Pavements” was Adele’s second single ever and won her her first Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 2009. She told Rolling Stonethat the song was inspired by a fight with an ex-boyfriend: After learning he’d cheated on her, she went to a bar he was at and punched him square in the face. “I got thrown out and as I was running away, the phrase ‘chasing pavements’ came to me,” she recalled. “I sang it into my phone, went home and got three chords together.”
10. “Water Under the Bridge”
Another midtempo number from 25, “Water Under the Bridge” was the album’s fourth and final single, focused on uncertainty in a romance: “If you’re not the one for me / Then how come I can bring you to your knees / If you’re not the one for me / Why do I hate the idea of being free?”
11. “Hometown Glory”
“Hometown Glory” is Adele’s first single ever and the first song she ever wrote, a love letter to her West Norwood suburb in London. She told Blues & Soulthat the idea first came to her when she was just 14 years old. “It was kind of about me and my mum not agreeing on where I should go to university. Because, though at first I’d wanted to go to Liverpool, later I changed my mind and wanted to go to university in London,” she recalled. “But because I love being at home and I’m really dependent on my mum, she still wanted me to go to Liverpool so that I’d have to learn how to do things on my own, rather than still be coming home for dinner, having her do my washing and stuff like that. So in that way it was a kind of protest song about cherishing the memories—whether good or bad—of your hometown.” She added, “Whereas having only been to Liverpool about twice, there’s nothing there that comforts me. Here in London—even if I’m having a really sh*t day—there’s still something I love about the place. So really yeah, in general it is an ode to the place where I’ve always lived.”
12. “Hello”
The song that launched a thousand memes, Adele has said “Hello” isn’t just about an ex, but about friendships and even family relationships from the past and growing up and apart from them. “I felt all of us were moving on, and it’s not about an ex-relationship, a love relationship, it’s about my relationship with everyone that I love,” she noted. “It’s not that we have fallen out, we’ve all got our lives going on and I needed to write that song so they would all hear it, because I’m not in touch with them.” The song hit No. 1 almost instantly in 36 countries upon its release in 2015 and shattered several chart records, becoming one of the biggest selling digital singles of all time. It also broke Taylor Swift’s YouTube record for shortest time to reach 1 billion (yes, with a b) views. The ballad’s success was pretty hard-earned, as it took about six months to complete the track from start to finish.
13. “Can I Get It”
Though Adele is best known for sorrowful breakup ballads, “Can I Get It” finds her craving a hookup and not beating around the bush about it: “Can I get it right now? / Let me let me just come and get it.” Who knew she’d deliver the best booty-call anthem of 2021?
14. “Set Fire to the Rain”
Water puts fire out, so this song title was a little baffling to some. Adele explained to The Sun, “Well, it’s a bit like ‘Chasing Pavements,’ you can’t do it. I was playing on my mind while I was trying to light a [cigarette] in the rain outside a restaurant.”
15. “Remedy”
Adele wrote “Remedy” about her son, Angelo, but she was reluctant to do so at first. “He’s the love of my life and the light of my life, but he’s no one else’s apart from me and his dad. So no one else can really relate to that. Also, all my fans aren’t parents, so they wouldn’t want to listen to that,” she recalled to The New York Times of her mindset at the time of recording. Producer and co-writer Ryan Tedder was working with her in the studio with the word “remedy,” and it clicked. “She immediately said, ‘This is about my kid,’” he said. “That unlocked the whole lyric. And it was done, written and recorded that day.’”
16. “Take It All”
In her live concert DVD Live at the Royal Albert Hall, Adele said of her ex that inspired “Take It All,” “He left me a couple of weeks after I played him this song. It was for the best, though. He was an ass and I was a b*tch—it wasn’t going to work.”
17. “My Little Love”
Adele speaks to her young son Angelo in a voice note featured on “My Little Love.” The singer struggles to explain her divorce to her beloved little boy, telling him, “Mommy’s been having a lot of big feelings recently… I feel a bit confused… I love your dad ‘cause he gave you to me. You’re half me and you’re half Daddy.” Talk about pulling at the heartstrings!
18. “Love in the Dark”
Adele only ever performed “Love in the Dark” once to date, saying at the time it was the “first and last” time because the song makes her “very emotional.”
19. “Crazy For You”
“Crazy for You” is one of the only love songs on 19 and is a fan favorite. Metallica frontman James Hetfieldperformed the track with his daughter, Cali, live in 2015.
20. “Skyfall”
Adele won an Oscar, Golden Globe, Grammy, BRIT Award and Critics’ Choice Award for the Skyfall theme in 2013, making it the first time ever that a single song won all of those awards.
21. “Woman Like Me”
Though much of 30 is about Adele processing her divorce with a combination of sadness, regret, and liberation, “Woman Like Me” is a return to form as she excoriates an ex. “Complacency is the worst trait to have / Are you crazy?” she spews. “It is so sad a man like you could be so lazy.” Preach!
22. “Cold Shoulder”
Adele’s music video for “Cold Shoulder” takes a literal turn.
23. “River Lea”
Adele says that this tributary off the Thames is special to her. “It’s a filthy river. My experience of it was, whenever I was in our version of the projects, the river ran through it — so it ran through all my aunties’ houses stuff like that. And we’d go down there and have little adventures, and sort of pretend like we were in the movie Stand By Me,” she recalled to NPR. “A lot of my life was spent walking alongside the River Lea to go and get to somewhere else. It linked quite a lot of estates to each other, so that’s how you’d meet up with your friends. But the idea of the song is that, especially since I’ve become a parent, let alone writing this record, I’m dealing with myself for the first time. And I have a lot of bad habits. And rather than admitting that I have bad traits in my actual character, I blame it on where I’m from.”
24. “Tired”
“Tired,” off 19, may as well be an anthem for women everywhere who’ve had enough of players wasting their time: “I’m tired of trying / Your teasing ain’t enough / Fed up of biding your time / When I don’t get nothing back / And for what, and for what, and for what / When I don’t get nothing back.”
25. “Turning Tables”
When Adele sings “I won’t let you close enough to hurt me,” you feel it, especially in this live performance from the Royal Albert Hall. In case you didn’t have enough reasons to adore Adele, check out her most inspiring body positive quotes.
