Adele's Hello beats Taylor Swift's record for most-viewed video in 24 hours

Correspondent | Tuesday October 27, 2015 18:24

 

“Hello, can you hear me?” sang Adele to the world. And the world answered: yes, and we’re watching you too. Many many times.

Adele’s video for new single Hello has broken Taylor’s Swift’s records for the most views on Vevo in 24 hours. The clip accumulated 27.7m views in its first day online, beating the 20.1m views that Swift’s Bad Blood and its star-studded cast of celebrities attracted in its first 24 hours.

Teased with a 30-second clip in the ad break of Sunday’s UK X Factor, Hello went viral when the full video was released on Friday, along with details of the singer’s forthcoming third album 25, which she says will be a “a make up album”.

The video was filmed in Montreal and directed by French Canadian film-maker Xavier Dolan, who said there was an instant connection when he first met the singer in London.

“We chatted about our lives and our loves and our romances,” Dolan told Entertainment Weekly. “It was so much about who we were. We had so much in common. Basically, all of her songs are revolving around the theme of unrequited love and so are my movies.”

Adele has yet to beat Swift’s other Vevo record, the 1.2bn views the Blank Space video has accumulated to make it the service’s all-time most watched video, although Hello has already clocked up an admirable 82m views and counting.

The single is also set to break sales records, shifting 165,000 copies in three days including 156,000 downloads in the UK and 450,000 US downloads in 48 hours.

Reviewing the song, Alexis Petridis wrote: “Adele sounds great: she sells the song without over-singing it, leaving the melismatic vocal fireworks to the inevitable spate of X Factor cover versions ... Hello underlines what we already know: [25] is clearly going to be enormous.”

Adele will perform Hello on Saturday Night Live on 21 November, a day after the release of her album. While you wait for both, here are seven other famous musicians who’ve said Hello in song.