I also think it’s interesting that Adele’s first music video in more than three years stars an African-American dude as her love interest/former love interest. Taylor has a well-documented blind spot when it comes to race, and it’s doubtful that she would even consider casting a minority actor/model as her fictional love interest. Taylor doesn’t even cast minority actors when she’s filming Out of Africa-themed music videos.
I’m not proud of this, but when Adele dropped the “Hello” single and video last Friday, one of my first thoughts was “I would love to see Taylor Swift’s face this morning.” Yes, one of the first places I went was to pit two enormously successful women against each other. As I said, I’m not proud. But to be fair to myself, there’s a lot of legitimate compare-and-contrasting going on between Adele and Swifty. Also, to be fair: both women are total professionals and their competition (or the media speculation about their competition) is completely at the professional level. Swifty isn’t singing songs about “Bad Blood” with Adele, nor is Taylor telling Vanity Fair that Adele is going to hell for whatever reason. Adele has barely said one word to or about Taylor in public. There is no “feud” in the gossip sense, they are just two professionals with a healthy sense of competition.
As for the comparing and contrasting… if we’re being honest, it’s sort of one-sided. Adele’s last studio album, 21, has sold 30 million copies and is one of the top-five best selling albums of all time. Taylor has sold about 27 million copies of all of her albums combined. Taylor held the record for most-viewed video within a 24-hour period for “Bad Blood” when it was viewed 20.1 million times on Vevo after weeks of hype, Instagrams, tweets and a big debut at the Billboard Awards (plus “Bad Blood” starred Taylor’s squad of A-list friends). With minimal advanced hype, a grand total of three Instagram posts and one Facebook post, Adele smashed Taylor’s record. “Hello” was viewed 25 million times on Vevo in a single day.
Taylor also holds/held a lot of records for downloads, single sales and album sales for 1989. Adele’s “Hello” is already the #1 download in 85 countries and there’s every expectation that when the album drops in November, Adele will smash every record then too. Adele was able to do all of this with such minimal social media effort. The only press she did was on the day she dropped her first single – she did not sit down for an advanced Rolling Stone interview or anything else, although (to be fair) I’m sure those magazine interviews are coming.
As of Sunday, Taylor has made no mention of Adele on her social media. Which is weird, because she’s usually pretty engaged with what’s going on with other artists, right? Lots of celebrities have done shout-outs to Adele on their social media, but not Taylor. Will she say anything? Is Adele – more than anyone else – the one Taylor could never collect as a friend?
Oh, and let’s not forget these two have been up for the same award before: in 2013, Taylor and Adele were up for the Golden Globe for Best Song, which Adele won for “Skyfall.” Adele would go on to win the Oscar while Taylor wasn’t even nominated. Remember Taylor’s face when Adele won at the Globes? That’s why one of my first thoughts was “I would love to see Taylor Swift’s face this morning.”
