British singer, Adele is back in the spotlight as she promotes her new album. Adele’s announcement of the impending release of her new album is accompanied by details on what inspired her work, including a tough divorce, mothering a boy who is distressed by his parents’ divorce, and recovering from the pain of a series of traumatic events.
The Grammy and Oscar-winning singer is the November cover star of both Vogue and British Vogue, and she opened up to the magazines about her life since the release of her previous album in 2015, much of which has been marked by her divorce from charity executive Simon Konecki.
Much of the fear that Adele’s friends felt during the Covid-19 pandemic was something she’d previously gone through after her divorce the year before. Speaking to Vogue, Adele said “Everyone had to face a lot of their demons, because they had so much time on their hands with nothing to distract them. They had to face themselves in isolation. Whereas I did that the year before”.
The singer said she was simply “going through the motions” and “wasn’t happy” when she chose to split. She added “Neither of us did anything wrong. Neither of us hurt each other or anything like that. It was just: I want my son to see me really love, and be loved. It’s really important to me. I’ve been on my journey to find my true happiness ever since.”
The singer’s divorce had an emotional toll on her, and she tried a number of coping methods to recover, one of which was going to the gym. Adele said, “It was a lot of sound baths. It was a lot of meditation. It was a lot of therapy. And a lot of time spent on my own. I realized that when I was working out, I didn’t have any anxiety. It was never about losing weight. I thought, If I can make my body physically strong, and I can feel that and see that, then maybe one day I can make my emotions and my mind physically strong,” she said.
Adele’s subsequent weight reduction made headlines across the globe, but the singer claims it wasn’t the first time her body had been scrutinised by others. “My body’s been objectified my entire career. It’s not just now. I understand why it’s a shock. I understand why some women especially were hurt. Visually I represented a lot of women. But I’m still the same person,” she said. For her, the worst part was seeing women have “brutal conversations” about her body. “I was very disappointed with that,” she said. “That hurt my feelings.”
Adele’s new album is a means for her to open up to her son about her divorce, the agony it caused, and why she went through it in the first place. Talking to British Vogue, she said “My son has had a lot of questions. Really good questions, really innocent questions, that I just don’t have an answer for, [like] ‘why can’t you still live together? I just felt like I wanted to explain to him, through this record, when he’s in his 20s or 30s, who I am and why I voluntarily chose to dismantle his entire life in the pursuit of my own happiness. It made him really unhappy sometimes. And that’s a real wound for me that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to heal.”
Adele emphasised the differences between her current album and her previous ones. She says “I realized that I was the problem. Cause all the other albums are like, You did this! You did that! Why can’t you arrive for me? Then [with this album] I was like, Oh, I’m the running theme [here], actually. Maybe it’s me! I feel like this album is self-destruction then self-reflection and then sort of self-redemption. But I feel ready. I really want people to hear my side of the story this time.”
