When life gives you lemons, you don’t always make Lemonade.

The first couple times I ran through all of Adele’s new album, 30, I couldn’t get comparisons to Beyonce’s Lemonade out of my head. Why? They’re both divorce, or in Beyonce’s case, divorce-adjacent records. And we know Adele is a fan of Lemonade,  having stated shortly after its release that it is “just so monumental.” Lemonade is monumental. It’s a self-contained epic: love lost, dishes broken, cars smashed, family histories dissected, and, in the end, a new baptism, where “true love breathes salvation. . . and every tear comes with redemption.”

That’s not the story arc of Adele’s 30. Adele’s tears aren’t purely redemptive. The only silver lining she can muster is that they might help to wash her face. Instead her tears are the tears we all cry at the forks in the road, hesitantly edging towards the decision we hope is right in fits and starts. Adele bounces from the darkest days of her divorce to some of the positive sides of her newfound independence without a mandate to chart the course concisely, with no declaration that she knew it was the right decision. 

It’s precisely that lack of decisiveness that makes 30 a triumph. Adele is flinchingly honest, bringing us up close and personal to her struggles via voice memos between her and her young child on “My Little Love,” and at some points keeping us at a further narrative distance on the epic, maudlin-in-a-good-way track “I Drink Wine.” But even as that tune comes to a close, we hear Adele quietly describing the times she had with her partner as “just memories in a big storm.” 30 is not on steady ground, and that’s what makes it a convincing album.

The thing is, I believe and love every Adele I got to meet on this record. I’ve loved Adele since she came out, but I viewed her previous discography as dealing primarily with two emotions, heartache and defiance. On this record we meet regretful Adele, buzzed Adele, embittered Adele — okay, we met her on 19, too, but it was different — as well as doubt-riddled Adele, and frisky Adele. And the multitude of Adele personas we get also find her using more vocal effects, and more calls and responses between multiple tracks of herself than ever before.

The swirl of vocal emotions on 30 called for a lot of sonic variety, so she, her co-producers, and writers delivered. In addition to new tracks with previous collaborators like Greg Kurstin, Max Martin, and Tobias Jesso Jr., Adele connected with the in-demand British producer Inflo, best known for his work with the collective Sault and Childish Gambino’s right hand man Ludwig Göransson. The tunes go from spare and haunting (“My Little Love”) to the string-heavy, TSOP closer “Love is a Game.” And it seems that all the producers know the not-so-secret secret to supporting a voice like Adele’s: Get the hell out of the way and let her cook.

And Adele cooks. I don’t watch football, but I listen to an uncomfortable amount of football discourse helmed by ESPN’s Bomani Jones. Recently, he was talking about potential greatest quarterback of all time Patrick Mahomes. Guest Nick Wright said this of Mahomes: “What makes him go from a really good quarterback to the most special quarterback I’ve ever seen is the stuff he does that you’re not supposed to do.” I feel the same way about Adele: It’s her climbs that go “too high,” her runs that jump two octaves like it’s a half step, and the way she’ll close a song with a vocal click that 99% of platinum selling artists would definitely edit out.

Adele is a hero because she does the things you’re not supposed to incredibly well. In our world, is a woman with a child supposed to get divorced because she’s not happy?! Absolutely not. Is she supposed to share raw conversations with her child about her emotional needs? Nope, that’s dirty laundry. Is one of the biggest stars on planet Earth supposed to run smoky vibrato lines across a hypnotic, spare R&B groove for five minutes? No, but what makes Adele go from being a really good vocalist to one of the most special of her generation is the stuff she does that she’s not supposed to. Sing on, Adele.