Born in 1988 in the United Kingdom, Adele Laurie Blue Adkins--or simply Adele, her stage name--brought some new vigour to anglophone soul music worldwide. Also, her songs resulted in some pretty awesome clips, like "Rolling In The Deep." It’s long been written by William Congreve, and not Shakespeare, that “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned”. It’s with that in mind that we all should take a closer and more careful look at the videoclip.
She is an offspring of modern times--Internet, blogging, and social media--and a true Generation Y member. Her profissional career started as she attracted a lot of attention, including from XL Recordings, through her My Space profile. There, she published three demo songs by herself earlier on this last decade. She was then invited to record for the label, which also represents artists and bands like Radiohead, Beck, and The White Stripes.
With solid talent at her disposal, Adele won many awards in the United Kingdom and made an ultimate appearance on Saturday Night Live back in 2008. Since then, she reached to the American music market and public, making it overseas.
With a couple of albums that reflect her youth--they are titled 19 and 21, respectively, signaling her age at the time of each release--Adele sings for the heartbroken, the loved and the in-between alike. Despite singing soul music, she makes not gospel but secular and emotional songs.
Not too long ago, the video for the "Rolling In The Deep" track made its way from Adele's official YouTube channel to my email inbox. After I watched it a couple of times, I decided I had one or two things I wanted to say about how an audiovisual text could be, at the same time, so bright and gloomy.
Every opening sequence in any fictional work is responsible for setting the general mood of the narrative. Our current pattern of videoclips--the type we like the most these days--tends to offer plots as a way of captivating more of the audience. That’s because we love fiction and stories and storytelling. A song is more interesting when it accompanies a story we can relate to.
"Rolling In The Deep's" opening sequence brings the artist, all dressed up, to a barely illuminated room. This room has furniture all covered in plastic sheets for protection. The furniture is neither old, nor new, for it’s impossible to tell and hence irrelevant to the story. It gives the idea of either an unused or abandoned room, a idea which associates with Adele’s expression. She is sitting there all sad and gloomy almost in the dark.
Article comments
1 - Raymond Crosse
I'm pretty sure those are shot glasses, with alcohol. I am also pretty sure that when you see the white powder, they are not referring to snow, blow maybe, but not snow. Probably references for reasons the relationship had not worked out.
2 - João Barreto
Yeah, it might be so, I suppose. But since there was no specific reference to drug abuse on the song, I went for the most basic elements. Thanks for the comment, tho. Cya.
3 - harmon jansen
Wow. You got it down. I am living this lyric, and the emotion I have yet to find words for, let alone effectively communicate (rolling in the deep) are exacted by this delivery. Not one typically at a loss for words, but as I find myself at these depths of loneliness and despair, rejected (for whatever reason) by the partner you would never fail, you are vulnerable, unprotected, raw, exposed, abandoned, seething with a miserableness of being unvalidated by someone cavalier with your very soul.
And that sorrow turning into treasured gold is the harvest of that emotional investment, a benchmark forever, a deeper knowledge of learning almost at a molecular level, a solid core of enlightenment to disallow any future infringements on your soul. An idelible golden security.
4 - Tiago
The clip really captures the imagination of those who are living the situation of being abandoned by someone who loves deeply. It was a wonderful analysis and really capturou o espÃrito do clipe.
5 - Misty
A+ Analysis.
6 - Misty
I agree that the images spring from and give expression to the depths of her experience. For me, the most haunting image is toward the end - the isolated whirling dervish of loneliness has stirred up all that white dust - all those tiny particles of crushed chalk or plaster or bones or dreams (the remains of the day) - and we see only the faintest implication of her form through the haze. That dark, cloaked, elegant, fierce warrior has cloaked herself again in the sea of tiny particles for the brief moment they are suspended midair. And that ephemeral sea engulfs her, embraces her, erases her. It's ghostly. She makes herself into a ghost. She is conjuring a deep in which to roll.