21 is the breakup album, named for the age Adele was when she made it. Her second record, it followed 19 and carried over the same plain naming logic, but almost nothing else stayed the same. Where the debut was a young singer finding her feet, this is someone who knows exactly what she has lost and exactly how to use it.

She built it with a rotating set of collaborators, Paul Epworth and Rick Rubin among them, which is partly why it refuses to sit in one lane: soul, gospel, country, garage-rock stomp, all bent toward the same wounded center. The lead single and opening track set the tone and then went supernova, sweeping the 2012 Grammys, including Album of the Year.

It became one of the defining records of its decade, the rare breakup album that sold to everyone, not just the broken-hearted. The grief is specific. The reach was universal.