Hello

Adele

Adele's new single, Hello, from her highly anticipated third album, 25, is finally here. And no surprise - her first new song in three years is another heartbreak piano ballad a la Someone Like You and Turning Tables, two of the songs from 2011's 21, her last LP which was one of the biggest selling albums of the last few years.

It's a conservative move on her part - don't shock the fans too much with something too edgy or off-centre; give them something they would expect from you based on past hits.

People are always falling out of love and when it happens, there's nothing better than a song to soundtrack a romance gone wrong.

"It's so typical of me to talk about myself I'm sorry," she sings in the mellow verse, with sparse pianos backing her up.

Her pipes are unleashed in the soaring chorus, where she sings, "Hello from the other side / I must have called a thousand times." The music builds up in the final third of the song as she repeats the rousing chorus several times.

The black-and-white music video, artfully directed by Canadian film-maker Xavier Dolan, sees her walking around forlorn, on the phone crying, and seemingly arguing with a lover played by a black actor.

Still, it's a compelling song, mostly because of her stunning vocals. As torch singers go, Adele knows when to let go and when to rein it in, without resorting to melodramatics or soulless vocal acrobatics.

The question now is, how will the other songs in the album fare?

In a recent Twitter, Adele has said that while her past albums have been full of break-up tunes, 25 will be her "make-up record", so maybe Hello is the exception, rather than the norm.

Happy, life-affirming Adele songs sound like an interesting proposition indeed and we will just have to wait and see.

25 will be released on Nov 30.