Someone Like You
by Adele
This is a past-tense song, and that is what makes it useful. I heard, you found, came true, she gave you: the card is full of irregular past simple forms, which is exactly the pile of verbs English learners are told to memorise and usually meet as a list. Here they arrive inside a story whose shape you already know. Two things deserve a pause. I wish takes a past form to talk about the present, which confuses nearly everyone the first time. And bittersweet is one of those compound adjectives English builds freely by welding two words together. The vocabulary leans abstract — glory, haze, regrets, memories — so it reads harder than the A2+ grade suggests. Comfortable if you can already follow a past narrative.
How to study this song
Learning “Someone Like You” means 62 entries at A2+ — 32 English words, 7 adjectives and 23 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. The glossary is the place to begin — days, face and friend are the song’s keywords. This one leans on its verbs: 23 distinct forms against 7 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| days | días | giorni | jours | dias |
What this song teaches you
Level · A2+
- Vocabulary words
- 32
- Adjectives
- 7
- Word combos
- 11
- Expressions
- 9
- Verb forms
- 23
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
“Someone Like You” is a piano ballad by the English singer Adele, released in 2011 as the second single from her landmark album “21”. Stripped back to little more than voice and a circling piano figure, it was co-written by Adele with Dan Wilson about coming to terms with a past relationship.
The song’s restraint proved its power: with no drums, no big production and no key change until the emotion demands it, it let Adele’s voice carry the whole story, and it quickly became one of the most admired break-up songs of its era.
Adele wrote it with the American songwriter Dan Wilson, of Semisonic, and the two produced it together at Harmony Studios in West Hollywood.
Did you know?
A raw, near-solo performance of the song at the 2011 BRIT Awards is widely credited with turning it into a phenomenon overnight, sending it to number one in the UK.
In the United States it also topped the Billboard Hot 100 — remarkable for a spare piano ballad — and helped make “21” one of the best-selling albums of the century. The track is often cited as a modern example of how a single voice and piano can outdo the loudest pop productions.
Charts & streaming
“Someone Like You” reached number one in the UK, the US and numerous other countries and was certified multi-platinum worldwide. As a centrepiece of “21”, which sold tens of millions of copies globally, it stands among the defining hits of the 2010s and a cornerstone of Adele’s record-breaking commercial success.
It spent five weeks at the top on each side of the Atlantic, was the best-selling single of 2011 in Britain, Ireland and Italy, and is certified 6× platinum in Britain and 5× platinum in the United States. It won the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance in 2012.