If you’ve found yourself listening to Adele’s new single, “Hello,” over and over again, you are not alone.
Fans had been waiting for new music from the Grammy-winning artist for three years, and now that it’s here, it’s set off a collective obsession.
Even celebrities are caught up in the Adele mania, which apparently has lots of people all in their feelings.
There is apparently science to back up why we can’t seem to stop listening to “Hello.”
Lindsay Holmes of the Huffington Post notes that according to a 2014 study, listening to sad songs produces positive emotions and can be therapeutic.
“We connect to things when they feel personal — and music is certainly no exception,” Holmes wrote. “Add this to some simple brain science and you have a powerful combination: Attachment and repetition.
According to The Telegraph, the video for “Hello” racked up more than 25 million YouTube views on its first day of release. The first of its kind to be shot using IMAX cameras, the six-minute video features the singer and “The Wire” star Tristan Wilds, himself also a musical artist who performs under the name Mack Wilds.
The video has been so studied and picked apart that its director, Xavier Dolan, felt compelled to respond to criticism about Adele’s use of a flip phone to say “Hello.”
“I’m like, ‘Guys, get over it. It doesn’t matter,’ ” he told the Los Angeles Times. “But the real explanation is that I never like filming modern phones or cars. They’re so implanted in our lives that when you see them in movies, you’re reminded you’re in reality.”
Fortune magazine heralded the return of the musical diva, whose album “21” was released five years ago, with the headline “Adele is here to save the music industry.”
“In the world of Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music, artists who can actually convince the public to pay money for music — either in physical media like CDs or vinyl records, or digitally through iTunes or another music store — are few and far between,” wrote Fortune’s Ben Geier. “There are only five artists who can pull off such a feat consistently: Adele, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Katy Perry, and Rihanna.”
Even superstar Lionel Richie, who scored a hot with his own “Hello” in 1983, appears to be into it. He posted about Adele’s single on his Instagram account, poking fun at the memes that had linked the two songs.