The Singles Jukebox

When We Got Close To Liking An Adele Song

[Video]
[5.90]

Micha Cavaseno: Adele’s back! Phrasing’s still terrible and goodness gracious the pitch hasn’t been worked on much but then again when you can make platinum albums without a drop of effort for MOR ballads, hey, who gives a fuck about improving lyrically or musically or whatever. No shots either if I could get the infinite money fountains that Adele strikes like oil geysers with each of these songs, I’d coast like Long Island. Go get that money.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Perhaps it’s the textual similarities, but “When We Were Young” is eerily like an parallel-universe version of “Wildest Dreams”; the bass is massaged expensively where the latter’s synths were, Adele’s vocal cracks (deliberate, I hope) the equivalent of Swift’s well-placed yelps. Adele’s intonation on “just like a mo-vie” and Tobias Jesso Jr.’s presence would be the glitches between worlds. Feels less suited for the giant-magnet cultural pull of “Hello” (though it’s Adele, who knows), but also feels more like a song.
[7]

Alfred Soto: This is more like it. When critics mention Adele inhabiting dreck, here’s a better example than “Hello.” Only it isn’t dreck — the melodic shift in “It was just like a movie” is the aural equivalent of a dissolve in an Altman film. Expect “When We Were Young” to haunt talent shows until the day Miami joins the Atlantic Ocean, but at least I’d play it on my fiddle as I sink, hoping Jessie Ware saves me.
[7]

Will Adams: Like most of 25, “When We Were Young” embodies the category of [6] that denotes songs that are executed perfectly but fail to move me. Edging it up the extra point, though, are the moments when Adele breaks from the professionalism: the crackle of “my GOD this reminds me” on the second pre-chorus and, most affecting, the switch of “We were sad of getting old, it made us restless” to “I’m so mad I’m getting old, it makes me reckless.” The song is theatrics, but of course it is, it’s Adele. Those little moments, however, contain the true pathos.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I never cared about and was confused about the appeal of Star Wars, and never thought about Adele except to appreciate her professionalism. My friend Pat, in trying to explain Star Wars, said that she was basically Adele. This made sense (I like how Adele sings MOVIE here).
[6]

Lauren Gilbert: “When We Were Young” is the kind of soulful, looking-back-on-a-relationship track that made Adele famous, and every music writer hoped that 25 would move on from.  It’s also the best track on 25.  There’s nothing new here, but it’s flawlessly executed; Adele’s voice soars.  It’s big and stage-y, the lyrics are forgettable, and I love every minute of it.  This is the song I wanted “Hello” to be.  I can even forgive it the Gotye reference.
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Adele has no time to be subtle, not when every single radio station and coffee shop loudspeaker waits for her music to play out of it. Every one of her big smash hits hides very little. Powered by her voice, she’s turning universal experience — mostly of relationships gone sour — into big lit-up billboards. “When We Were Young” doesn’t change the formula, it just does it better than her other songs, all of which are stubbornly fine. The song keeps growing in intensity, her voice adding power to the song in total rather than standing out on its own. This is the first Adele song I’ve heard where that big, obvious theme at the center — picture a camera zooming in on a flashcard with “We are going to die” written on the center — stands out from the voice singing it. 
[8]

Brad Shoup: Two singles in and nothing’s propulsive. I’m a little nervous. The bass does yeoman’s work sweeping up the doldrums. But she’s happy in her upper midrange, singing about taking pictures like Taylor hasn’t sewn that concept shut.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: 25 might as well be titled 21 2: Back in the Habit; Adele has served the planet its musical comfort food for the next three years. Or, if you’re me, your Sleepytime Teazzzzzzzz. You know who could sing the hell out of this? Jazmine Sullivan.
[3]

Ramzi Awn: Adele plays within herself but falls short. The gospel at the end of the track sounds like a distilled version of what an Adele song should sound like.
[5]