By now, you've probably seen or at least heard about Adele's music video for her newly released single "Hello." The track is off her latest album 25, set to be released on November 20.
The song is pure Adele glory, a heartwrenching tale of breakup angst portrayed by her beautiful signature voice. Yet oddly enough one of the biggest questions people had about the video, which has now gathered more than 79 million views, was about a certain prop that you might pick up on in the first few moments of the video. Specifically, people wanted to know why on earth Adele—in the year 2015—was using a flip phone?
That's right ladies—the song might be fresh but the technology Adele was sporting was straight out of the early 2000s:
So why was the soulful British crooner using this painfully outdated technology? Was it a political statement? Is it part of the video's storyline? "Hello" director Xavier Dolan explained in an interview with People magazine that in fact neither was true.
"It's just not that big of a deal. It makes me uncomfortable filming iPhones because I feel like I'm shooting an iPhone commercial," said Dolan of his decision to use the basic cellular device. "Those things: iPhones, laptops, all those elements, to me, they bring me back to reality: That's not what you want. You want to get out of your own life; you want to enter someone else's; you want to travel somewhere; you want to be told a story."
Apparently Adele was completely on board with the sentiment because it made the final cut, but Dolan wonders if using such a conspicuous anachronism in his video might be detracting from the full emotional weight of the video that he wants his viewers to experience.
"The only thing I'm hoping for is that they're going to be touched by the video," Dolan explained, adding, "I'm realizing maybe I've been more distracting than anything else with that flip phone, but it wasn't intentional!"
