Adele - Hello

The music video starts off with a clip of a window frame, with dead flies and cockroaches on the window ledge. The image is very unsaturated and looks like a clip taken from an old film. The camera stays in the same place but the focus is shifted onto the exterior, where a car is seen moving down a dirt road towards the house from a distance. We later find out that this is the singer of this song, Adele, and she is revisiting her old house which she hasn’t been to in a while from what the state of it looks like.

There is no music as Adele enters the house, but we hear some dialogue of her talking to someone over the phone, saying she is losing signal, and then the call disconnects. This creates a sense of being separated from civilisation for the viewers watching the video, as Adele loses connection with whoever she was on the phone with. This shows us that Adele is visiting this house purely to reminisce on the past and to feel a sense of nostalgia, and she is perhaps staying here to disconnect herself from other people temporarily, as a mental break from humanity.

In the next clip, we see Adele removing sheets from her furniture, which creates a lot of airborne dust. This is a strong suggestion of the fact that no one has been here in a long time, and further emphasises the ideas of separation from civilisation. Following this, Adele makes herself a cup of tea in an old fashioned way, by turning on a gas stove and placing the kettle on the stove, which shows the audience that this is an old house, potentially holding great amounts of memories for Adele.

As Adele walks along the corridor, while the music is playing, a clip of a man running around with joy fades into the video, and Adele is seen smiling slightly. The audience sees her first memories come to sense as soon as this flashback is shown, and they expect more memories to come along. Adele states in the lyrics that there is “a million miles” separating her from the man shown in the flashbacks, which the audience figures to be her ex-boyfriend. The idea of such a vast distance emphasises the fact that no matter how hard Adele tries to get to see him again, the attempt won’t succeed. Adele singing “Hello from the other side” shows us that the other side is the other reality she imagines there to be with her ex-boyfriend in her head.