Ready

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Today, we are looking at another song from Adele’s reconciliatory 25 chapter, “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”. I love the melody of this song. It’s a bop. It’s also in that category of things you wish you could say in life but never do because it’s weird.

Adele starts the song by emphasizing that whomever she was talking about invited her into the relationship. He was ready, and she was his “everlasting love.”

She continues with:

/I’m giving you up
I’ve forgiven it all
You set me free…/

See, now this is an anthem. This is the song I wish could replace “Someone Like You.” No one should want a fool back. In this song, she doesn’t want him back, she is finally freeeeee.

The chorus is this incredibly grownup response to someone from her past (who hurt her), moving on. She sings:

/Send my love to your new lover
Treat her better
We’ve gotta let go of all of our ghosts
We both know we ain’t kids no more/

She sends her best to his new partner, and simultaneously sends a message to him that she hopes he has grown up and can treat her (the new girl) better.

That’s the weird thing about relationships. Different relationships bring out different sides of us. Life can shape us in ways that change us, and we can be different people in different relationships. Have you ever seen two divorced people, and you wonder who they were or how in the world they fit in a puzzle together in the past? I know I have. But that’s the thing. People grow up. People learn. (Some people don’t, by the way). But that’s one of the mysteries of life.

Then there is reference to letting go of ghosts. The video plays with this idea as she is sort of translucent and images of her sort of overlap with one another.

In the second stanza, she talks about how she was like strong heat rising, and he couldn’t take it. She emphasizes that she is still rising. She sings that he couldn’t “keep up.” She makes it clear that this was a relationship where she shone too brightly, and he wasn’t a fan. (Not the best dynamic).

Her attitude throughout the song is very much of someone who is past something and extending an olive branch of sorts. Like an I-wish-you-well-but-not-sure-you-are-capable-of-better.

I almost didn’t post about this song, but she actually comes through in this song. It’s a good one. It’s a mature track filled with actual self-worth rather than it being a victimized scorned lover anthem.

She ends the song with a repetitive:

/If you’re ready, if you’re ready/

And you know what Adele, we are ready. Ready and here for this empowered version of you.