Their first collaboration with Hello launched her album 25, and became the fastest video to reach 1 billion views on YouTube. Now Adele reunites with Xavier Dolan to create the opening video for her new album 30 - feeling like a return in more ways than one.

We are back in the same place - this was filmed in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, the same setting as for Hello, in September - and the cellphone coverage is not much better than it was in the first video.

But Adele is different, and it is not just the well-publicised physical transformation. Dolan's purpose in his evocative visual for Easy On Me - as she leaves that house in the country, to make a new start - is to offer a glimpse of the stronger and more confident woman that she is now. Then he leaves Adele to make her own statement with the song.

Dolan is been renowned for the strong female roles in his films, from his debut feature I Killed My Mother (J’ai tué ma mère) in 2009 (which he wrote and directed when he was 19) and Mommy in 2014. His eighth feature film, Matthias and Maxime, premiered in the official competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. He’s currently working on his first miniseries, The Night Logan Woke Up.

“I was honestly hoping for this to happen,” he has said about the chance to work with Adele again on Easy On Me. “For me, there’s nothing stronger than artists reconnecting after years apart. I’ve changed. Adele’s changed. And this is an opportunity to celebrate how we’ve both evolved, and how we’ve also both remained faithful to our dearest themes. It’s all the same, but different.”

What is certainly the same is the success of their collaboration. Two weeks after its release, Easy On Me is on track to reach a billion views on YouTube even sooner than Hello.