Lionel Richie Jokes About Adele’s ‘Hello’ Similarities
Adele‘s latest single “Hello” and Lionel Richie‘s 1984 smash “Hello” share more than just the same title: Both tracks feature sparse piano, lyrics dripping with yearning and pained vocals. Even their corresponding videos find the artists prominently using a telephone to communicate. The similarities between the two songs are not lost on Richie either, as the singer posted an Instagram photo playfully recognizing that perhaps it’s he that Adele is looking for.
Richie’s cheeky Instagram was his response to a viral clip posted Friday that combined the two “Hello” videos under a coat of the green-and-black hued motif that features in Adele’s first 25 video. In the short mash-up (via Billboard), Adele and Richie both sing “Hello” into the phone’s receiver. When Richie asks his trademark lyric “Is it me you’re looking for,” Adele snaps her flip-phone shut, promptly ending the phone call.
Adele appeared on the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast show Friday where she joked that she and Richie should engage in a “Hello-Off.” “We’ve definitely got to do something, me and Lionel,” Adele added. As for why Adele uses a flip-phone in “Hello” as opposed to newer cell phone models, the video’s director Xavier Dolan explained to the Los Angeles Times, “If you see an iPhone or a Toyota in a movie, they’re anti-narrative, they take you out of the story. If I put an iPhone or a modern car in a movie it feels like I’m making a commercial.”