Million Years Ago

What is the context and how did that influence the work?

“Million Years Ago” is a song Adele recently released on her newest album 25. Adele actually wrote the song along with Greg Kurstin who then produced it and placed it on her album. It is the ninth track on the album. In a recent interview, Adele explained the significance of the song and her inspiration for writing it. She also revealed that the song was actually added to the album in the last minute. She explained the song as very “stripped-back” and explained how it was much like the songs on her previous album, 19. The entirety of the song is just Adele on her piano and expressing her feelings, with no other instrumentals. She also said that she became influenced to write this song and produce it when she was driving past Brockwell Park, which is a park in South London where she used to live and spent the majority of her youth. She claimed that as she was driving past, she felt a range of emotions and felt all her pervious memories of her times at that park at this time. She wrote the song simply because she missed her previous life and memories and how easy life was back then.

 

What is the artist communicating and how?

The two major themes expressed in “Million Years Ago” seem to be that things happen in our lives that we would’ve never though would happen and that when they happen, we miss the old lives that we used to live. In her interview, Adele claimed that she never thought that the life she had now would have ever happen to her. She used to sit in Brockwell Park with her friends, playing the guitar and writing songs together, enjoying what was happening then. When she looks back on it, she never thought that now there is no time to do the same things with them because each person moved on with their lives to better things, including herself. The significance of the song just being her and her guitar is also explained in that statement, because it shows her emotion and how much she misses playing the guitar just with her friends. The entire purpose of the song is to explain that life has a funny way of turning out and when we stop and look back at everything that has happened and how much has changed, we begin to miss our old lives and how things were back in the old days. 

Why do you find it beautiful?  

This is my all time favorite song by Adel because of the beauty and simplicity behind the words. I first heard the song when I watched her live performance of it on The Today Show on November 25^th. Her performance had one of the simplest sets I have ever seen, however, it was just as fascinating and enticing. The rest of her album is just as beautiful but this song has a certain significance and tone to it that is unexplainable, really. My favorite line from the song is “I wish I could lived a little more,/ Look up to the sky, not just the floor” because I feel as if I connect most with that line. Although most people would view this song as sad, I think that the song instills some new kind of confidence in someone because even though the majority of the lyrics are much like the one I said was my favorite, they also seem to be telling the audience that we can overcome the hardships and look up to the sky eventually. I think the song is trying to tell its audience that eventually our lives will get better and we will overcome whatever hardships we are currently facing.