“Rolling in The Deep” by Adele – Analysis

I’ve been listening to Adele since I was very little and she has always been a favourite artist of mine. While listening to her, I’m given the feeling of nostalgia. While I love many of Adele’s songs, this one is one that reminds me of singing my heart out to at six years old. After all this time, it remains one of my favourite songs – I could be upset or stressed and this song would be able to cheer me up.

The tone of “Rolling in the Deep” is wrath, displeasure and heartbreak. Adele is describing her state of mind in result of this heartbreak and betrayal she has endured. She does so in forms of hyperboles, metaphors and symbols. Using the lyric “reaching a fever pitch and it’s bringing me out the dark”(0:10), is a symbol for her anger and rage bringing her out of the dark. In this case, “out of the dark” is referring to her happy, past self, becoming angry and now seeing him “crystal clear” – no longer seeing him as she did before. She then stresses the emotions she’s feeling in the metaphor “there’s a fire starting in my heart”(0:33), because fire resembles anger and pain. And finally, as an example of hyperbole, she uses the line “the scars of your love leave me breathless”(0:52). This explains that this betrayal left her shocked and astonished, but she is obviously not shocked enough to go physically breathless. 

In this song, Adele paints a very clear picture of her feelings with her words, giving the listeners an impression of a broken woman as she feels deep heart-felt emotions caused by someone who used to be very close to her. This betrayal not only led to her heart breaking but experiencing dark thoughts, desiring to get revenge and make the person feel more hurt than she did. When I listened to this song at a younger age, I felt a sense of confidence in her voice’s tone. Yes, she was feeling anger, but after experiencing this, she became stronger, more sure of herself and confident that she wouldn’t let someone walk all over her like that anymore. 

The combination of her powerful voice and engaging lyrics permits the listeners to get a front row seat of the exact emotions she’s feeling. The personification of “love” in “the scars of your love”(0:52) highlights how much she has been hurt. In real life, scars don’t typically come from a minor bruise or scrape – they come from much deeper wounds. So, let alone the deep cut, she was able to pick up the pieces and partially heal, showing the strength that was required to do so. 

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