25 Review

Hello is a proper event, a slow build to a chorus she sings like a landslide, and its video and its opening line entered the language within a week. It is also the only moment on the album where anyone takes a risk. The rest is craft in a defensive crouch. When We Were Young is a well made ballad with a fine vocal and a lyric assembled from familiar parts. Send My Love is the one uptempo experiment and it is pleasant rather than exciting.

Water Under the Bridge and Million Years Ago aim at the ache of the previous album and land on nostalgia in general, which is a much weaker target than one specific person who hurt you. The production is bigger and less interesting, more reverb, more layered backing, less air. Nobody could have followed 21 comfortably, and the choice made here was to sound expensive and cause no trouble. Enormously successful, rarely revisited, and the least loved thing she has done.