McDuffee

Tricia McDuffee

English 1201.507

Professor Stalbird

Feb 16, 2020

Hello?

By Tricia McDuffee

When you think about love songs, Hello isn’t the first one would think about. Lionel

Richie did the original song and Adele did a song with the same name. They are both about love

but different types of love. I would like to talk about how the versions are the same about love

but different in what or how they are going about it.

I will first begin with Hello by Lionel Richie. The music video starts it shows him as a

teacher in college talking to a group of college kids, he goes into the song looking at Laura who

is the love interest of the music video. He goes on to talk about looking at her and following her

during some of her classes. Talking about how he thinks about saying “I love you” to her in his

mind, it then goes out to her getting ready for bed and him calling her going “Hello, is it me

you’re looking for”. Going towards the end of the video, a student comes in saying that

something is going on in the pottery classroom and he gets up and goes to see what the issue is,

Laura is there and is finishing a bust of him and it then fades as she leans forward to him. The

audience for this video I would say is young adult to adult.

Adele’s song with the same name shows the opposite of what Lionel Richie’s is but it

still is about love. Her video starts with her outside and talking on the phone. She goes on sing

about looking in on the renlaeaship after a break up and seeing where things went wrong. You

see the love interest setting on a bed then getting up and leaving the room. Her whole song is

1
McDuffee

about being an outsider looking in. Her “Hello from the other side” talking about how the years

should have healed wounds but hasn’t. She wants to make up and try to be friends, but he wants

nothing to do with her. It’s about heartbreak and trying to come back from that. The audience for

this is about the same as the other one. Young adult and adults. Generally, this type of song

speaks to those who have experienced this type of pain.

Both songs talk about love but different types of love and what happens with it. Lionel

Richie’s talks about how a love is starting if from a stalkerish stand point but she accepts it and

Adele’s talks about heartbreak and trying to come back from it. Both use the emotions of the

audience to get their point across, but they are different. One is about hope while the other is

about tying to get back to themselves. They are both good at what they are trying to get across

but depending on how you see it, it’s good and bad.

Both Adele’s and Lionel’s versions of the songs are haunting how they are portrayed.

One shows love that is just beginning and the other is about love ending. They both convey

different reactions to them but in the end it’s about love and the different forms about it.

Work cited

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_ILDFp5DGA