Adele is leaving it all on the table!
And we’re not just talking her highly anticipated new album — she also opened up to Rolling Stone about the process of making new music and the tumultuous period of transformation that led to it. In an interview released on Thursday, the singer opened up like never before about her divorce from Simon Konecki, parenting her son Angelo, her new romance with Rich Paul, and more.
Related: Adele Gets Shockingly Candid In New 73 Questions Vogue Video — WATCH!
Addressing the breakup, the Grammy winner reiterated that she still has a great relationship with Konecki — but struggled with her relationship with herself:
“I didn’t really know myself. I thought I did. I don’t know if it was because of my Saturn return or if it was because I was well and truly sort of heading into my thirties, but I just didn’t like who I was.”
While divorce may have been the right choice, the public nature of it was difficult. (She had to take fan reactions celebrating the split as a sign of a great new album “with a pinch of salt.”) She explained:
“It made me really sad. Then having so many people that I don’t know know that I didn’t make that work … it f**king devastated me. I was embarrassed. No one made me feel embarrassed, but you feel like you didn’t do a good job.”
However, her singledom led to a period of intense transformation, of which her weight loss journey was just a small part. The 33-year-old reflected:
“If I can transform my strength and my body like this, surely I can do it to my emotions and to my brain and to my inner well-being. That was what drove me. It just coincided with all of the emotional work that I was doing with myself as a visual for it, basically.”
The Easy on Me artist has stated that the upcoming album was a way to explain the situation to her son (who apparently has a Libra tendency to tell her to “chill” about her emotions.) One track even features voice memos of their heavy bedtime conversations, which she began recording out of anxiety:
“It was unbearable. and so if I started getting anxious about something I might or might not have said, I could just listen back to this and be like, ‘OK, I’m fine.'”
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The album also references another relationship post-divorce — one she was able to keep quiet — that ultimately ended because of long distance. Huh. This doesn’t sound like anything that was heavily rumored at the time.
While she isn’t naming her ex, she is willing to speak about the relationship, saying:
“[It] was a great learning curve and nice to feel loved, but it was never going to work.”
She remarked that dating in Los Angeles was too casual for her, and joked:
“You can’t set me up on a f**king blind date! I’m like, ‘How’s that going to work?’ There’ll be paparazzi outside and someone will call [gossip site] Deuxmoi, or whatever it’s f**king called! It ain’t happening.”
LOLz!
Now, Adele is in her most “incredible, openhearted, and easiest” relationship ever with Rich Paul, whom you may know (but probably don’t, let’s be honest) as LeBron James’ manager. The love connection actually came about right when Adele was ready for it — shortly after her estranged father passed away.
Mark Evans had left her mother when she was just three years old, and she’d had limited contact with him ever since. Father and daughter finally reconnected after he was diagnosed with cancer, something Adele didn’t know she needed:
“I don’t think I understood the deepness of how I felt about him until we spoke.”
The time they spent together allowed them to address some old wounds from his previous abandonment:
“I think I’ve never been fully in any of my relationships. I always had this fear from a really young age that you’re going to leave me anyway, so I’m going to leave or I’m not going to invest myself in anything.”
The songstress described a “physical reaction” to her father’s death, in May of this year, after which she “felt so calm” and as though she had been “set… free.”
She connected with Paul a week later.
Related: Adele Addresses Cultural Appropriation Backlash From THAT Carnival Look
Her romantic relationship isn’t the only fulfilling change — she also made her first “industry friends” during this period, including neighbors Nicole Richie and Jennifer Lawrence. She dished:
“They humanized me because I had avoided talking to anyone that was ever famous in any capacity, because I was like, ‘Well, I’m not famous.’ I’m very British like that. We never spoke about work, which was amazing, because most of the time when I catch up with someone, they want to know all about my work, and I’m like, ‘I don’t want to talk about that. Can we talk about something else? I’m knackered.'”
Overall, she reflected:
“I’m not frightened of loneliness anymore.”
Wow! All of this just makes us even more excited for the album. It seems like Adele’s come such a long way. We’re so proud of her and appreciative of her bringing us along for the journey.
[Image via Adele/YouTube]
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