Review: There are many heirs to her throne, but Adele is still queen of the ugly-cry ballad

When we talk about Adele's singing — when we've talked about it over the past decade as she became the biggest pop vocalist on the planet — we've tended to marvel at her control, her finesse, her mastery of tone.

But in the most moving song on her long-awaited new album, Adele threatens to crash through all that.

It's almost frightening, this song, in its intensity: A slow, stark, 6 1/2-minute voice-and-piano ballad about learning to let go of trauma, "To Be Loved" — the next-to-last cut on the 12-track