Adele’s fourth studio album, “30,” is a strong, emotionally-loaded body of work surrounding her divorce from ex-husband, the resulting impact on her and her son, and finding new love. The album, straddling the line between familiarity and innovation for the artist, features strong songwriting and production but struggles at moments with excessive song length.

The album opens with “Strangers By Nature,” an encapsulating, almost haunting track mourning the singer’s failed romances. (“I’ll be taking flowers to the cemetery of my heart…Every anniversary, I’ll pay respects and say I’m sorry”)

The second track and lead single “Easy On Me” implores the listener to be forgiving to her following her divorce. (“I had no time to choose what I chose to do.”) The song sounds much like one would expect from the singer, albeit somewhat underwhelming for a lead single, lacking the solid hooks and definition of past hits like “Hello” and “Someone Like You.”

Following is possibly the most heartbreaking song on the record. “My Little Love,” is addressed to her son in the midst of her split from her husband. The song features clips of the singer talking with her 9-year-old son Angelo about her confusion and pain, which add to the song but could have been cut down to reduce the six-and-a-half-minute length.

The album takes a turn with the following two tracks, which are upbeat and thematically similar. The former, “Cry Your Heart Out,” contrasts lyrics of near-despair (“When will I begin to feel like me again?”) with a more upbeat sound, complete with questionable vocal effects that seem tacky and detract from the meaning. The latter features the singer contemplating jumping into a relationship against her better judgment. (“I know that it’s wrong/But I want to have fun”)

Adele seems to lose this apprehension in the Western-sounding and radio-friendly “Can I Get It,” in which she boldly tells her love interest that “I long to live under your spell” and “I’m counting on you to put the pieces of me back together.”

The album moves away from the pop hits with the standout track “I Drink Wine,” a strikingly honest song acknowledging the emptiness of the singer’s drinking and approval-seeking. (“When I was a child, every single thing could blow my mind/Soaking it all up for fun, but now I only soak up wine”) Adele finds that “I need some substance in my life, somethin’ real, somethin’ that feels true.”

While much of the rest of the album is praise-worthy, listeners may find it difficult to push through the more boring and lengthy parts of it.

In “All Night Parking,” an interlude featuring the late jazz pianist Erroll Garner, Adele continues the excitement of new romance from “Can I Get It,” but without the same energy. “Woman Like Me,” probably the least interesting song, mourns a man’s “complacency” and failure to recognize her worth. It sticks to a small vocal range and boring melody, failing to make the song worth its five-minute playtime.

The songwriting improves on “Hold On,” another standout that returns to the honest, vulnerable songwriting of “I Drink Wine.” Featuring a minimal piano-and-guitar track for much of the song, the singer implores herself to keep moving forward in the midst of her painful and tumultuous circumstances. (“It’s like a ride that I want to get off…Just hold on/Let time be patient”) The following song, “To Be Loved,” features solid lyrics about her desire for affection and decision to leave a relationship. However, the song’s almost 7-minute length and slow pace makes it hard to fully appreciate these lyrics.

The album ends on a lighter note with “Love Is A Game” where she somewhat playfully tells the listener that “love is a game for fools to play.” It is slightly off-putting as a closer of an album that both describes the deep pain of divorce and the hope of new love, but it is a decent song nonetheless.

Overall, Adele meets the expectations placed on her for this highly anticipated record. She has had an abundance of life events to write about since her last album in 2015 and definitely made use of them to make her writing feel authentic and honest.