Adele's "Easy On Me" Reaches Ten Weeks at #1

This week, Adele’s “Easy On Me,” fell to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, which means that—provided it doesn’t step back up to number 1—it ties her hit “Hello” for ten weeks at number 1, her longest reign on the singles chart.

“Easy On Me” is the first single from her 30 album, and has been described as a kind of sequel to “Hello”. Like her previous hit, she also co-wrote it with producer Greg Kurstin.

With ten weeks atop the chart and over a dozen random listens by me on the radio, I have to say . . . I still can’t sing it. I remember the long “ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-sy on me” melisma, but other than that, the tune isn’t catchy, nor is the lyric particularly engaging. It’s not a great song.

But with a multimillionaire dollar promotion behind it and incessant airplay, an audience can become addicted and will lap up almost anything.

Studies have shown that prolonged exposure to something can breed familiarity and acceptance. In the case of music we like, listening releases dopamine from the brain, a pleasurable sensation, and so we can keep going back and become addicted to the song. In other words, on a first listen, we might not immediately love a song, but with repeated listens it grows on us. Marketing teams that are promoting superstar artists are counting on this!

I don’t mean to rag on Adele, whom I think is a major talent. She’s written some very good songs; my favorite is “When We Were Young,” which, surprisingly, didn’t go top ten.

Adele is the voice of this generation, in much the same way that Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and Whitney Houston were the voices of their generations.

But those singers’ managers knew their clients’ gold was in their voices, not their writing, and, for the most part, got them great material to work with. (Streisand did co-write one of her biggest hits, “Evergreen.” She apparently had the tune in her head for some time, and then shared it with Paul Williams, one of the great lyricists of all time, and he finished the song.)

Sinatra “owned” some of the greatest songs ever written, and when others record them, they are (often unfavorably) compared to his versions.

Streisand rose to stardom in the ‘60s by recording many of those classic standards and show tunes, and her early singles were written by some of the best songwriters ever, like Jule Styne and Bob Merrill (“People”), “Stoney End” (Laura Nyro) and Carole King and Toni Stern (“Where You Lead”), and, of course, Marvin Hamlisch and Alan and Marilyn Bergman (“The Way We Were”). In her (or her team’s) eagerness to keep the hits coming, she forayed into disco a bit and then had a collaboration with Barry Gibb on her massive hit album Guilty. The lead single from that album, “Woman in Love,” was a big hit but it’s a song she’s always hated and rarely performs live. In the ‘80s, she had the good sense to go back to the classics with the Yentl soundtrack and The Broadway Album.

As for Houston, she was teamed up with the hot songwriters and producers of the day and racked up nine #1 singles, the biggest and best of which was “I Will Always Love You,” a re-imagining of Dolly Parton’s song. Even when she was at her peak, I often told friends she should release an album of standards (as Natalie Cole did successfully in the ‘90s) or reach back to her gospel routes and do a gospel album (as her friend Aretha did in the early ‘70s). After her death, I mourned that we would never get those albums.

Super-producer Clive Davis (and, by the way, kind of a manager and father figure to Houston) wrote in his entertaining memoir a few years back about his frustration with great vocalists who didn’t know their true gift and insisted on writing their own material. One example he gave was the ‘80s powerhouse singer, Taylor Dayne. After a handful of big hits, she insisted on doing it her way and the two parted ways. And the rest is history—no more hits for Ms. Dayne.

Obviously, the Adele formula is working and when you and your team are raking in that much money, you don’t want to mess with the formula too much. But, boy, would I love to hear her tackle some great show tunes or even cover a great song (as Houston did) and rework it for a new generation. Something like Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” or Journey’s “Faithfully.” Or her team should dig deep to find the best songwriters of today to craft a legendary song for her.

Adele is a very good songwriter and she should continue to flex that muscle, but she’s too good a singer not to have stellar material to equal that voice.

In fifty years, her voice and a few of her songs will likely still be remembered. But will up-and-coming singers be covering her compositions? I’m not so sure.