Stars

Happy to have received, as 2011's last gift for me from my dear best friend Jerich, the Adele DVD of her concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Scouting for a gift for him and for my Tita Sharon, I saw the DVD and I knew I needed it in my life. As I've said to my sister, the motto for 2012 is "things you don't need will make you ugly" (proud to have coined it, hoping no one's ever thought of the exact line before hahaha), but this one, I understood was a necessity-though created, it still is needed. Thank God Jerich bought for me.

So almost all the songs I love. All of them. But what really hit me was when Adele "The Goddess" started talking about Make You Feel My Love and how, after Amy Winehouse's death, she started dedicating it to one of  her biggest influencers and one of the world's most celebrated artists. In classic, recent concert style, she asks her audience to use their phones or cameras for lights. So she starts singing, the lights go down and all you'll see is a hall full of swaying blue lights.

"She can see us now." Adele says of the late Amy. And to make things better, more dramatic, more painful, a huge disco ball descends from above, white lights projected onto it and it creates just this moving (in all sense of the word) atmosphere. It was beautiful. I would've loved to be there and just stay there for as long as I could. It makes you want to cry or at least feel incredibly at awe over such a simple yet beautiful thing.

So she sings the Bob Dylan original and the Royal Albert Hall looks like a swirl of stars in space...Like a milky way. With Adele's voice like honey, it's a recipe for heartbreak, for peace, for a haunting...It's just that beautiful. And what makes it more touching is when people sing along to it. It kind of reminded me of that Justin Timberlake performance of Until The End of Time at the Madison Square Garden (that too, I have a DVD of. Thanks mom)... Though different songs, they both achieved a mood, a feeling that lingers. Pure magic, I tell you.  

Of course, she follows it up with Someone Like You as the second-to-the-last song and I had to tear up at the end of the song, especially after she tells the story behind it. 

It's one of the best gifts I've ever received since birth and I am so thankful to Jerich for this. I've kept watching since Saturday and it's incredibly official, I am an Adele fan. Mainstream pop she may be, but it's actually just as cool as those artists you'd never find on iTunes or on Google. 

I highly-recommend you spend good money on this cause this one will be a real deal in the future. Trust me.
After watching it, I suddenly wanted to revive my singing and make out of it, a serious career. Haha. Oh well.

-Gerard