Was Hello taken from Martha?

Adele’s hit single Hello has been the target of internet buzz when listeners have noticed the lyrical content of the song is similar to Tom Wait’s 1973 classic Martha.

Waits song, which can be found on his debut album Closing Time, starts off with the same context as Adele’s Hello.

“Hello, hello there, is this Martha? This is old Tom Frost and I am calling long distance, don't worry 'bout the cost 'cause it's been 40 years or more, now Martha please recall. Meet me out for coffee, where we'll talk about it all." – Tom Waits, Martha

“Hello, it's me. I was wondering if after all these years, you’d like to meet, to go over everything." -Adele, Hello

The accusations mostly came from Twitter as users pointed out the similarity of Adele’s hit song with the classic Tom Waits folk tune. They said that the two songs are basically the same in terms of lyrical context. One twitter user said that two songs share the same subject matter but sound different together.

Interestingly, Hello producer Greg Kurstin said in October that Tom Waits was one of the inspirations for the Adele song. In an interview in EW, he said "She [Adele] didn’t want to just go through and write a pop song with any particular formula. We talked about Tom Waits, and different storytellers like that. I think that was the idea that we wanted to do something that was very honest about where she was at right now, and she wanted to do something that was real and believable.”

One can say that Adele must have been influenced by Tom Waits and that she chose to pay homage to the 66 year old musician, and not rip him off.

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