From the sorrow and regret of “Hello” to the burn-it-all-down wrath of “Set Fire to the Rain,” Adele’s vast collection of ballads contains some of the most unrelentingly sad songs.
“Love in the Dark,” from Adele’s third studio album 25, is a piano ballad about the end of a love that is so melancholy and slow-moving that it could be called a dirge. It doesn’t exactly scream a radio song; thus, it was never unveiled as one, unlike “Hello” and the Max Martin-penned “Send My Love (To Your New Lover).”
However, in the last month, “Love in the Dark” has risen from deep-cut status to become a new fan favorite, which is an unusual feat for a six-year-old track.
According to Alpha Data, the data analytics company that drives the Rolling Stone Charts, “Love in the Dark” has been the eighth-most popular song from the 11-track-long 25 every week for the previous six years. “Love in the Dark” has consistently ranked 17th out of 34 songs from her three studio albums. The top three songs are usually “Someone Like You,” “Rolling in the Deep,” and “Hello,” in that order.
“Love in the Dark” started trending on TikTok in late summer, and instead of being the soundtrack to a meme or a dance, the conversation appeared to revolve around how overlooked the song is. Before August, the song received between 150,000 and 250,000 on-demand audio streams each week in the United States; by mid-September, that figure had risen to almost 1.5 million. It was the most popular song off 25 by the week of September 17th to September 23rd, out streaming even the gigantic “Hello.” That makes it Adele’s third-most-popular song, behind only “Rolling in the Deep” and “Someone Like You.”
Streaming data on the most popular albums over the last six years demonstrates how uncommon this feat is. Only three additional albums including a track that achieved a comparable rise to the top were unveiled after 2015, omitting tracks with expected boosts from remixes, single releases, music videos, current events, or seasonal popularity.
Due to a successful fan movement a year after the release of Walls, Louis Tomlinson’s “Defenceless” is a current example of a single that did something similar. The song went from being the eighth-most-streamed song one month prior to becoming the album’s most popular tune the week of January 29th, 2021. On Twitter, Louis remarked on how “crazy” it is for an album tune (a non-single) to attain such popularity.
Melanie Martinez’s song “Play Date,” from her album Cry Baby, went from being the 12th most-streamed single one month before becoming the most popular track on the album four years later. The song became a hit on TikTok and Spotify a few months later, and it was later certified platinum. Mitski’s “Me and My Husband” went from being the ninth most famous song on Be the Cowboy to being the number one most popular in September.
