“Hold On” is the 10th track on 30, an album that feels nostalgic but not recycled, fresh, and inherently Adele. When this song begins, everything goes dark. Yet as the singer’s powerful, lachrymose voice echoes the title, a beacon of light draws you back to hope, grounding you. “Let time be patient / Let pain be gracious,” she sings as a manifestation for her own struggles and her listeners’. At the bridge — “Sometimes loneliness is the only rest we get / And the emptiness actually lets us forget / Sometimes forgiveness is easiness in secret” — things come into focus with simple, profound wisdom until Adele’s trademark crescendo. Although heartbreaking, what’s so hopeful about this masterful collection is that you can see the artist on the other side of her pain. She recently told Oprah how 30’s release was the closing of that chapter. While this music is intended to meet you somewhere along your journey of grief, pain, and lost love, it reminds you to “hold on / You are still strong / Love will soon come.” Adele did. Look at her now. —Daniel Head
