‘Saturday Night Live’ music: Adele performs ‘Hello,’ ‘When We Were Young’

There is no bigger star in music right now than Adele, so it was a huge get for “Saturday Night Live” to get her as the musical guest for this weekend’s show to perform her new single “Hello.” This has taken over the radio and pop culture; heck, her new album “25” is poised to set the record for the biggest first week in album sales since this started to be calculated more than two decades ago.

Overall, her performance was almost exactly what you probably wanted it to be, though we’d quibble slightly with the arrangement. We thought that the backing music and instruments should have been a tick or so louder, since it felt like they were too muted. Adele’s voice, however, is stellar. Also, we love how pure and unedited it sounded; it’s not often that you get that sort of thing on “SNL” when someone is this brave to sing live. Not every note was perfect, and it was almost better because of it.

Of course, this is a brilliant, emotional song, and we adored Adele’s reaction to the applause at the end. It’s one of the reasons why she is so popular; in addition to her talent, she just has a natural relatability to her.

We’ll be back with more on her second performance soon. Update: It’s here! The second song was “When We Were Young,” another powerful ballad from her album. Her vocals in here were incredible yet again. It’s hard to do what to really say about an Adele performance, since so much of it transcends the ordinary “SNL” music.

Want some other news related to tonight’s episode? Then head over here to get our take on the comedy! Also, sign up here to get some other TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)