Song Lyric Sunday – Rolling in the Deep

Good morning and welcome again to Song Lyric Sunday, This week we are asked to pick a Grammy Record of the Year of our choice. It was interesting to learn that there is an award for Record of the Year and also Song of the Year. The main difference between the Grammy Record of the Year and Song of the Year awards is that the Record of the Year award recognizes the performance and production of a song, while the Song of the Year award recognizes the song’s composition. Well as our host Jim Adams asked us to pick Record of the Year, that’s what I am doing. However I don’t think it makes any difference. It’s just another award.

I have chosen the 2012 winner for ROTY, Rolling in the Deep by Adele. It has an amazing sound and showcases her powerful voice. The lyrics, although retaliating, are also quite poetic. Overall a very worthy winner. I love it!

The Song

This is the first single from English R&B singer-songwriter Adele’s second album 21. The song was written and produced by Adele and British producer Paul Epworth, who is best known for manning the boards for Bloc Party and Florence and the Machine, and also for his work on Everything Is New, the second release from Adele’s chum, Jack Peñate. Adele describes the single as a “dark bluesy gospel disco tune.”
On this revenge song, Adele lays into a former boyfriend. “It’s me making a bit of a statement,” she told Q Magazine. “People will hear it and go, Wow, she ain’t mucking around.”

Adele described the song to Spin magazine as a kiss-off to an unfaithful dude. “It’s me saying, ‘Get the fuck out of my house instead of me begging him to come back,” she said.

“It’s my musical equivalent of saying things in the heat of the moment and word-vomiting,” she added. “It was my reaction to being told my life was going to be lonely and boring and rubbish, and that I was a weak person if I didn’t stay in the relationship. I was very insulted, and wrote that as a sort of fuck you.”

Adele credits her producer Paul Epworth for coaxing a mighty performance out of her on this track. “There’s notes in that song I never even knew I could hit,” she said.

While she was touring North America in support of 19, Adele was introduced by her bus driver to a Wanda Jackson greatest hits album. As she traveled round the Southern states, she found herself drawn to American country music, including Alison Krauss, Rascal Flatts and Lady Antebellum. Once she began prepping her sophomore release back in England, Adele began incorporating those new influences into songs, like this one where her voice incorporates in part Jackson’s dirty-blues growl. “I wanted the songs not to have anything glittery or glamorous about them, like an organic tapestry rather than like a Gaga album,” the singer told Rolling Stone. “I mean, I love Gaga, but I didn’t want to get wrapped up in all that European dance music.”

Like 19, the 21 title refers to Adele’s age at the time the songs were written. The British singer explained on her website that the album “knocked me for six when writing it.” She added: “It’s different from 19, it’s about the same things but in a different light. I deal with things differently now. I’m more patient, more honest, more forgiving and more aware of my own flaws, habits and principles. Something that comes with age I think. So fittingly this record is called 21. Everyday something happens that affects me, whether it be relationships, events, something I hear, something I see or something I feel. All of which is helping define me and turning me in to who I’m becoming. The whole reason I called my first album 19 was about cataloguing what happened to me then and who I was then, like a photo album you see the progression and changes in a person throughout the years. I tried to think of other album titles but couldn’t come up with anything that represented the album properly, I kept swerving 21 thinking it was obvious. But why not be obvious?”

Much of 21, including this song, is about Adele’s life after a tumultuous relationship in the years following her success. “I was angry!” she told Spinner. “I was really, really angry with my personal life up to about a year ago. I’ve grown up a little as well, and I like to think I’ve blossomed into who I’m going to become. I’m not really willing to be walked all over like I was with the relationship that the first record is about. I have the upper hand now, so yeah, the whole record is a bit bitter.”

Adele could have called this song “We Could Have Had It All,” but that would have been fairly typical and sound like something Whitney Houston would sing. Instead, she used another line in the chorus that is curious to American listeners, adding some intrigue to the song. So what does the phrase “Rolling In The Deep” mean? She described it to Rolling Stone as an, “adaptation of a kind of slang, slur phrase in the UK called ‘roll deep,’ which means to have someone, always have someone that has your back, and you’re never on your own, if you’re ever in trouble you’ve always got someone who’s going to come and help you fight it or whatever like that. And that’s how I felt in the relationship that the record’s about, especially ‘Rolling in the Deep.’ That’s how I felt, you know, I thought that’s what I was always going to have, and um, it ended up not being the case.”

Speaking about this song soon after it was released, Adele made it clear that the fit of fury that inspired this song was not a common occurrence. “It takes a lot of s–t to get me upset and crazy, so when I get angry I can really feel my blood flowing around my body,” she said.

21 debuted at #1 on the UK album chart in the last week of January with sales of over 200,000 copies.

Adele wrote this in three hours the day after she broke up with her boyfriend. Arriving upset at the studio the day after they split, she wanted to write a lovelorn ballad. Producer Paul Epworth persuaded her to write a more feisty song.21 was the best-selling album of both 2011 and 2012 in the US with sales of 5.8 and 4.4 million respectively. It was the first time one longplayer had topped the sales chart for two years in a row since Nielsen Soundscan began tracking US album sales in 1991.

Adele also scored the best-selling single of the year with this song.

Adele won six Grammys at the ceremony – Best Song, Best Record and Best Short Form Music Video for this song, Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for 21, and Best Pop Solo Performance for “Someone Like You.” “This record is inspired by something really normal, everyone’s been through it, just a rubbish relationship. It’s been the most life-changing year,” she said during her Best Album acceptance speech.

Adele’s haul of six awards made her the second female artist after Beyoncé in Grammy history to win six categories in a single night.

Courtesy of Songfacts