Posted by Easy On Me was released in October 2021, the first single from the album 30, and once again, like every great success of Adele, it is a song that explains the sad emotions of the British singer. And if in the past the topics have often been linked to the torments of love, this time Adele’s personal situation has changed considerably: in 2019 Adele and her husband Simon Konecki separated. The 30‘s Adele is therefore a woman with a divorce in the process of being defined, the mother of a 9-year-old son, Angelo, with many questions about the separation of his parents.
Easy On Me is therefore an open letter to her son, in an attempt to explain why her parents separated and to tell Adele’s conflicting emotions with respect to the whole situation.
The meaning of the lyrics
There ain’t no gold in this river
That I’ve been washin’ my hands in forever
I know there is hope in these waters
But I can’t bring myself to swim
When I am drowning in this silence
Baby, let me in
The opening verses describes the way in which Adele sees the broken relationship with her ex-husband, while trying to explain it to her son. There was some hope inside the relationship, but surviving the silence was impossible: conflicting emotions that testify to the effort with which the couple came to the decision to break up.
From difficult emotions comes Adele’s request to her son to be kind, to go easy on her. With requests for explanations, with those silent accusations that every separated parent sees in the eyes of their children.
Go easy on me, baby
I was still a child
Didn’t get the chance to
Feel the world around me
I had no time to choose what I chose to do
So go easy on me
The great efforts Adele put into keeping the situation in place emerge again in the second part of the song:
There ain’t no room for things to change
When we are both so deeply stuck in our ways
You can’t deny how hard I have tried
I changed who I was to put you both first
But now I give up
Easy On Me is therefore another song by Adele full of pain, but this time linked to a completely different life situation. And addressed to a part of her life that is so close and meaningful to her: her own child, involved in the same pain with her.
