Cristina’s Sunday Tune & Tale
‘Beautiful Hell’ By ADNA
written by: Cristina Munoz
@cristinamunoz8
If you’ve never heard ADNA listening to ‘Beautiful Hell’ should come with a warning.
I’m simply relieved I didn’t need a pace maker as when I first heard this staggeringly magical song last year my heart was beating so fast (how I know I’m hearing magic) I seriously could have met my maker that fateful day.
The fact Adna put the two words ‘beautiful’ and ‘hell’ together alone had my poetic imagination racing, actually hearing her song for the first time sent all of me into a spin as I have never heard anything quite like it.
After surviving listening I was so enraptured I tweeted “If Hell was anything like how beautiful & exquisite ‘Beautiful Hell’ is by ADNA everyone would die to go there.”
“Beautiful Hell” is like a precious, stunningly beautiful, priceless jewel of a tune. It’s as if a wizard sprinkled some magical glitter all over it so when you listen, as the music and her voice sways from side to side as if cradling you it feels like you’re being willingly placed under a mystical spell.
ADNA is special so it’s a mystery to me why it took until 2016 to find out about her and it seems I’m not the only one.
If you do a search for Adna or Adna Kadic on Google the information about her on Wikipedia isn’t in english and there’s no Wikipedia information on ‘Beautiful Hell’ at all so I have no idea how well this song did when it was first released in 2015.
I’m grateful for ‘Spotify’ as the only reason why I heard ‘Beautiful Hell’ in the first place was because Spotify included the track on their ‘Deep Dark Indie’ playlist. It was curiosity which got me playing ‘Beautiful Hell’ as the name ADNA was also a mystery to me but not for long.
Before I knew it I was listening to every ADNA song Spotify has available, thirty-nine of them so far which I have loaded on to my own ‘Sound Of Only ADNA’ playlist, each track just as gorgeous as the other. By the time I finished listening to all of them I was completely melancholically and permanently in love with her magical sound.
You know you resonate with an artist when you feel like sharing every single song of theirs you hear. The feeling is delicious. You want everyone to hear for themselves how wonderful their music is so they can feel how you do too. This is exactly how I feel about Adna.
I literally went on a sharing frenzy after I discovered ADNA so her music often is featured @soundofwomen
If you’re anything like me you’ll be wondering so who is Adna?
Well aside from being like a musical magician to me ADNA or Adna Kadic is a Swedish singer-songwriter who currently lives in Berlin. This says it all to me, as she has more in common with Australian Nick Cave who once lived in Berlin than she does with the most well known Swedish band of all ABBA.
Nothing against ABBA in fact quite the opposite as it’s time for a tale.
ABBA was the first english singing pop band I fell in love with when I was eight. Being recently migrated from Spain to Australia I was still learning english so getting to hear lots of Spanish words and phrases in ABBA’s music was extremely comforting to me. Classics like ‘Mama Mia’, ‘Fernando’ and of course ‘Chiquita’ which was my favourite song as a child.
Speaking of ‘Chiquita’ Sinead O’Connor has recorded the most wonderful cover of this song I’ve ever heard so look it up on YouTube, now back to my tale.
Agnetha Faltskog with her yellow yellow hair, blue blue eyes and amazing voice was also my very first #1 crush. She was the most beautiful woman in the world to me back then, the first to give me butterflies in my tummy. I was so infatuated I had Agnetha’s gorgeous face on a white ABBA Arrival T-Shirt I wore non stop until it literally fell apart and my mother to my horror used it as a rag!
ABBA to me are pure pop, who have created music to listen to under the sun, whereas ADNA creates pure dark indie folk pop music to listen to at night under the moon, though both have created beautiful art which is timeless.
Adna Kadic was discovered after posting a few songs on YouTube when she was only sixteen. By the time she was eighteen in 2012 her first self titled EP was released. She is proving herself to be prolific as since then she has already released a few more albums ‘Night’ in 2014, ‘Run, Lucifer’ in 2015, ‘Smoke’ EP in 2016 with her new album ‘Closure’ being released this month.
You would think a young artist as gifted and as talented as Adna would have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter but not yet. She currently has over 800 twitter followers and I don’t get it at all.
Seriously I do not understand why she doesn’t have as many followers and fans as say Halsey. Nothing against Halsey as ‘BADLANDS’ is BADASS however like Halsey once said on an interview I heard, “There’s no math to it.” so she deserves all the success she has attracted and then some.
When it comes to ADNA I think the issue isn’t a mathematical one.
It’s the fact she is Scandinavian so the Western World along with mainstream radio, including bloody Australia hasn’t heard her extraordinary sound yet because believe me when you do you will be a passionate fan for life.
‘Beautiful Hell’ is the third track from her amazing ‘Run, Lucifer’ album released in 2015. It opens gently with one of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies I’ve ever heard which begins and ends like a thunder-storm on the horizon at night, lifting in volume and flowing like blood throughout the entire song.
When I heard these two opening lyrics…
I wonder how Agab can feel this much
How Agab can feel that something this big
…being me the first thing which came to my mind was “Who the hell is ‘Agab’?”
Which brings me to another tale, as the last time I found myself asking a similar question was after the first time I heard the opening lyric from ‘Cloudbusting’ by Kate Bush.
Who could ever forget this first line…
I still dream of orgonon
At first I thought maybe ‘Orgonon’ is where a Greek God once lived.
Yet even without understanding the word I instantly loved how it sounded as if ‘orgonon’ was the name of a mystical world or city like ‘Camelot’ or ‘Atlantis’ or maybe it was a land way up past the faraway tree instead.
The fact is I wanted to go to ‘Orgonon’!
Later when I found out ‘orgonon’ was the name of Kate Bushes family farm in England it was a total let down, so to this day when I hear ‘Cloudbusting’ the word ‘orgonon’ still makes me think of another mystical world not a farm which works way more for me with the song’s message as well as how the song feels to me.
Now I feel the same way about ‘Agab’ as in my mind Agab is the name of a passionate hero or heroine wielding a sword from another magical dream like world.
Being a why person, just like with ‘orgonon’ I found myself pausing ‘Beautiful Hell’ and googling ‘Agab’ as I couldn’t stand not understanding what ‘Agab’ means and found the following “Agab in the old testament meaning to have inordinate affection or lust.”
Well at least I was right about the passionate part, so when you read and hear all the lyrics knowing what ‘Agab’ means they make far more sense as it’s exactly what it feels like when you’re overwhelmed with affection or lust for another.
Next with the mystery of ‘Agab’ revealed I then played ‘Beautiful Hell’ properly.
When Adna starts singing this exquisite opening verse…
I wonder how Agab can feel this much
How Agab can feel that something this big
How it multiplies in my veins
And in my blood and home
It triggers itself in my thoughts
…I was instantly struck by the gentle tone of her voice which I felt like an injection of intense emotion straight into my veins. The timbre of her melancholic voice is staggeringly beautiful, soothing and comforting.
If you’re a fan of ‘Daughter’ or ‘Birdy’ like me you will hear similarities as Adna has one of the most emotive voices I’ve ever heard…period.
I feel the best way to listen to ‘Beautiful Hell’ is in the dark. I feel this way about all of Adna’s music as her songs are of the night. They represent the sound of what makes the night beautiful, mysterious and so filled with possibility.
Listening to her sing these lyrics is like hearing sensual poetry being sung as let’s face it when you feel ‘inordinate affection or lust’ for another they do invade your thoughts, get under your skin and into your very bloodstream which is magical if they feel the same way about you, or utter not beautiful hell if they don’t.
There’s also so much yearning and longing when she sings…
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
…which feels like a lullaby, though she lifts it up a few notches when she sings…
I’d like to be your
Beautiful hell
Your beautiful hell
I’d like to be your
Beautiful hell
Your beautiful hell
The line ‘I’d like to be your beautiful hell’ had me floored and earned my immediate respect.
I’m a big believer in letting our dark sides come out to play once in a while otherwise it’s a life half-lived. The same goes in our relationships, if you find someone you can let both sides of yourself out with and who is willing to do the same for you, who can accept both the beauty and hell within themselves and in you hold on to them.
All the lyrics to ‘Beautiful Hell’ are like micro poetry which gets repeated throughout the song with that exquisite melody holding everything together. It’s hard sometimes to believe it’s just her producing the magical sound she does however it is just her.
ADNA truly is extraordinary. She has managed to put her breathtakingly beautiful micro poetry to music created from subconscious dreams. All of her work brings to the surface with devastating clarity, intelligence and honesty our invisible worlds and that’s a gift from the arch angels themselves.
Everything about her sound, her music comes from the same other world all great art comes from which is why I often find myself listening to Adna when I’m writing as her music inspires me. It helps me tap into my subconscious, get into ‘the zone’ and go to another moment, place, time or world.
If you’re any type of artist, be it a poet/writer or a songwriter, painter, you name it, once you start listening to her music you’ll understand exactly what I mean.
There’s no actual official video for ‘Beautiful Hell’ however it was included as the first song in her ten minute concept performance video ‘Smoke’ released last year – in which you can watch Adna perform three of her most loved songs – ‘Beautiful Hell’, ‘The Prettiest’ and ‘Run Lucifer’ live.
In ‘Smoke’ Adna is up on stage playing ‘Beautiful Hell’ in the dark surrounded by smoke. It’s as if the music has been set loose and she’s a part of the magical mystical sound she’s creating. It gave me shivers watching her perform all three songs which are also the perfect introduction to her music.
I can’t help thinking of the line “We think we want to disappear when all we really want is to be found.” from ‘Lonesome’ also by Adna which feels almost prophetic to me as I believe it’s only a matter of time before her music is ‘found’ by music lovers all over the world.
It’s already happening as the single ‘Overthinking’ she released late last year has had over two million plays on Spotify. I’m sure the same thing will happen with her latest single ‘Thoughts’ released only a month ago and now with her title track ‘Closure’ released early this month.
Her new album ‘Closure’ could be the album which gives Adna the world-wide attention she so richly deserves as an extraordinary intelligent talent like hers comes around once and only once.
If you get the opportunity to see Adna perform live then if I were you I would move heaven and earth to do so as this girl is making it happen.
The time has come to be put under Adna’s spell by letting her be your ‘Beautiful Hell’.
Here we go…
Ten Minute Full Live EP Video ‘Smoke’
Track List – Beautiful Hell, The Prettiest, Run, Lucifer
Other Recommended Stand Out ADNA Tune’s – Closure, Thoughts, Overthinking, The Prettiest, Run, Lucifer, Night, Limit, Lonesome, Intro/Berlin, Thank God For Sending Demons (Kleerup Cover) and Corner Of My Heart,
Recommended ADNA Albums & LP’s – Closure, ‘Run, Lucifer”, Night and ADNA
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