Someone like you

I need to stop posting pictures I can't find sources for. Sigh.

I don't know how this has happened. You know I'm hopeless at listening to any new music. We've established I've never even been dumped. Yet somehow I have become utterly obsessed with Adele's current album 21.

I realise I'm late to the party on this one. That's just how I roll. I have to hear a song on the radio twenty times before 'll even consider purchasing it (or asking my husband to illegally download it for me. Ahem). With Adele, the crunch moment came when I caught her performance at this year's Brits. Crammed in amongst all the pyrotechnics and profanities, the obnoxious dance routines and rampant auto-tuning, she took to the stage in a simple black dress, a pianist her only accompaniment, and held that auditorium captive for a full five minutes with nothing but the force of sheer, raw talent. Spellbinding. I wanted to high five my TV.

Oh wait. I don't have a source for this one either. Shit.

I generally don't really "do" albums, so when I say I'm obsessed with her album, what I mean is I'm obsessed with two songs on the album, which I play constantly on repeat for weeks until I'm so sick of them I never want to hear them again as long as I live.

The weird thing is, the songs that I become obsessed with are never the fun, perky ones. They're always the morose, melancholy, cant-believe-you-dumped-me-you-bastert ones. What's that all about? Shouldn't I, as a loved-up newlywed, be listening to songs of joy, and wonder, and everlasting love? So how come it's songs of heartache that infiltrate my thoughts so slyly, so deeply, that it's only when I start getting funny looks from my fellow passengers that I realise I'm quietly singing them on the bus? (Yes. I am that weirdo.)

I think it all comes back to my adoration of sad films, sad books, sad TV adverts - let's add sad bastard songs to that list, shall we? There is just something so cleansing, revitalising, in imbibing someone else's pain and heartbreak in neat little 3-minute chunks. Instead of making me weep for my imaginary lost loves, it makes me wistfully content (if such a state exists) and grateful to have found someone like Fin, who would never, ever, knowingly do something that would make me write an album like this.

The face of a man who listens to whole albums IN ONE GO.

(He did, however, describe Adele as "mum soul". When I logically pointed out that *I* like her, and I'm not a mum, he respond, "yeah, but you're in the mum genre". I'm sorry, what? First of all, what exactly is this "mum genre"? And secondly, if I take it to mean what I think he thinks it means, SINCE WHEN AM I IN IT? Aren't I in the cool young hipster genre? No? Anyone...?)

Bastert.

P.S. For those of you attending the APW book club meet-ups this weekend, I hope you all have a fabulous time. Edinburgh ladies - see you tomorrow! x