On Friday, Oct. 15, Adele shattered Spotify and Amazon Music records with the release of her new single “Easy on Me.” This single comes from her hotly anticipated album “30,” which is set to be released on Nov. 19. The teaser clip of the song alone garnered over 16 million views, becoming the most viewed clip by a female artist on Twitter. The poignant and emotional piano ballad is a plea to her son, Angelo, to help her through the aftermath of her divorce.
On the day of the release, Spotify announced on social media that the single had become the most-streamed song in a single day. “Easy on Me” stole the title from K-pop boy band BTS, which has held the crown since May of 2021. On Saturday, Oct. 16, Amazon Music announced that the single had received the most first-day Alexa song requests in Amazon Music history.
This is not the first time Adele has broken streaming records. Her previous album, “25,” had the highest first week sales in U.S. album chart history. Her 2015 single “Hello” became the fastest video to reach 1 billion views on YouTube.
And just like that, @Adele set a new record 🏆 pic.twitter.com/WIz55hQmln
— Spotify (@Spotify) October 15, 2021
What has the conversation been like on social media? At the Social Media Listening Center, we used a search for keywords “Adele” and “Easy on Me” and “Adele” and “record.” The term “Adele” has been widely used and is not specific enough to be included in this search. While this search may not be fully extensive, it provides a glimpse into the online conversation.
On Oct. 15 when the single was released, the search found more than 129,800+ tweets discussing this topic. By Oct. 16 at 11:59 pm, the search found 231,238 mentions across all platforms. The overall sentiment of the search was 71.1% positive and 28.9% negative. To get a better look at the conversation and sentiment surrounding this topic, we paid close attention to the word cloud capturing the most common words and phrases associated with this search:
To gain even further understanding of the sentiment surrounding the news, we looked at the most commonly used hashtags related to this search. We found that #easyonme, #adele, #adele30, and #blackpink are at the top. The hashtag #blackpink is in reference to the K-pop girl group Blackpink, who have also been climbing Spotify charts. When searching the keywords “Adele” and “Easy on Me,” we found that some of the top themes of discussion the day the news was announced were “Adele 30,” “Video,” “Hello,” and “New Single.”
Who is engaging in this conversation? Unsurprisingly, the majority of mentions surrounding this topic are from female Twitter users in the 18-35 age demographic located in the United States. The top influencers on Twitter are primarily news outlets, including Reuters, Forbes, BBC News, billboard, and others. Celebrities have also engaged in the conversation surrounding Adele’s new single as well, including American rapper Cardi B.
Adele gonna make me argue with my man before my birthday 🥲🥲
— Cardi B (@iamcardib) October 9, 2021
The keyword search also revealed that Reddit users are engaging in r/Popheads, r/Adele, and r/AskWomen. One of the most popular posts in r/Popheads included the Spotify link for “Easy on Me” and received 2.8K+ upvotes and 640+ comments. The comments contained statements of overwhelming support for Adele, including “I just love her voice so much. I know it’s cliché, but I really think she could sing the phone book and I would still love it. It just sounds so beautiful.”
The volume trend of this conversation has declined since the single was released. However, this conversation is not over just yet. Nov. 19 is just around the corner, so it’s likely Adele will continue to trend for weeks to come. In the meantime, we’ll be streaming “Easy on Me” from the Social Media Listening Center.
Author: Kendall Phillips
