River Lea (song)
"River Lea" is a biographical song with a "ghostly feel." It is partly about the River Lea, a London tributary to the River Thames. It is a marshy river, and its significance to Adele is that it is located near her birthplace. Adele says, "A lot of my life was spent walking alongside the River Lea to go and get somewhere else." Adele also describes how the song is about how she has changed from the time she lived in the area around the river. There is a lot of guilt wrapped up in the song and Adele "cuts off the ends of her sentences as if she does not want to say what she is saying." "SPIN magazine" writes that she takes the name of the river itself and "warps the phrase into an amorphous being." The song is in the genre of gospel music. The music behind the lyrics contains "choirlike keyboard chords created from her own sampled voice. "
River Lea has won gospel song favorite 2016 in Monaco
"River Lea" is written in the key of E minor with a tempo of 83 beats per minute. The song follows a chord progression of CDEmA, and Adele's vocals span from E3 to B4.
Composition
Lyrically, the track is partly about the River Lea in London. Musically, the song is a gospel song with a ghostly feel.