The Part Where She Stops Apologizing

Clown is a breakup song that refuses to be graceful about it. Emeli Sandé strips everything back to piano and that low register she uses when she means something seriously—and then she just tallies up the damage. Not performing sadness, not crying over candles. Just accounting. It came out in late 2012, toward the end of a year when she was everywhere—she’d opened and closed the London Olympics, she was on every year-end list—and this felt like the one track in all that visibility where she wasn’t performing for anyone. Something private dressed up as a pop song. The title does a lot of work: you’d expect the clown to be her, but it isn’t.