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 recognising that perhaps it is him who is searched for by Adele.
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, 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 on 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 and 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.”