Adele album review: On 30, she's still heartbroken and belting it out over a gentle piano 

While the topic of her divorce is all-consuming, the singer seems to be pushing gently at the boundaries of what people expect of her

Adele’s divorce from her husband is a topic that swallows 30 entirely.

★★★☆☆

There is a sense in which 2021’s biggest single – 84.9m streams in a week on one platform alone; straight to No 1 in 25 countries; a song that received more first-week plays on US radio than any other song ever – wasn’t so much a comeback as an act of global reassurance.