Time Against Us And Miles Between Us

Adele “I’ll Be Waiting”

If you take the lyrics of “I’ll Be Waiting” at face value, it’s a “baby please come back I’ve changed for the better” kind of song. But if the sound of it changes its meaning a lot — it’s upbeat, brassy and assertive in a way that makes it seem like the possibility of Adele’s ex taking her back seem like a foregone conclusion. She’s making a great case for getting back together, or at least it sounds like one. The tension at the heart of this piece is that trying to get this failed relationship to work again may in fact be a terrible idea and the singer’s intense optimism about this may be misguided and possibly quite pathetic. But it’s also sweet, especially when you realize that she’s probably working even harder to convince herself.

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