Adele ‘changed by motherhood’

Adele, who is now in NY promoting her latest album, co-wrote the song with Canadian musician Tobias Jesso Jr.

At just over 30 million copies sold worldwide, 21 sits comfortably as the 20th-best-selling album of all time, and there’s only one other album released in the iPod era that cracks the top 50: Norah Jones’s Come Away With Me, which has sold 25 million since its 2002 release.

The star is to appear on the upcoming programme Adele At The BBC, where she gives a candid interview to Graham Norton. “21” album collaborator Paul Epworth and the singer fall into a dreamy, drum-heavy, electronic groove on “I Miss You”. It’s impossible not to think of the Lionel Ritchie hit of the same name in reference to it, but the somewhat cheesy ’80s hit is obliterated as soon as Adele unleashes the power of her pipes on the chorus, wailing “Hello from the outsiiiiiiiiiide/At least I can say that I triiiiiiied”. This is the same pattern she used in naming albums 19 and 21.

The album’s production quality matches that of the singer’s voice, and when you’re talking about Adele, quality doesn’t get much better. “That’s pretty boring”, she told BBC 1 about her initial subject matter.

With 25, though, she’s managed to follow up, with disarming ease, an album that’s impossible to follow.

The fan later posted what seemed to be a tweet from Adele’s document label, XL Recordings, ordering the removing of the “infringing materials” and threatening authorized motion. “Making up for everything I ever did and never did”. I’m a bit of a drama queen. There are plenty of lines such as “I feel like my life is flashing back and all I can do is watch and cry” and “what if I never loved again?” and happiness is kept at a distance. It’s as if she’s written love-letters to former selves, characters who’ve played roles in her love life – past and current, as well as one joyful little ditty to the smallest man with perhaps the biggest presence in her life. “There’s a lot of great artists in the world right now, but she set the bar as far as quality and commerciality”.

After all, if we’re going to relate to her heartbreak as conveyed by her lyrics, maybe it has to be all the nitpicking.

Six months passed between writing the verses and chorus of first single ‘Hello’. She offers a brief glimpse of it on Water Under the Bridge – “If I’m not the one for you / You’ve got to stop holding me the way you do” – and the last track, Sweetest Devotion. “It’s about friends, ex-boyfriends, it’s about myself, it’s about my family”.