Adele Opens up About Her Divorce Ahead of New Music

Adele is speaking out about her divorce from Simon Konecki nearly two years after splitting from the father of her 9-year-old son Angelo. Ahead of the Oct. 15 release of her new single “Easy on Me,” the Grammy-winner spoke with Vogue and British Vogue about her divorce after privately settling earlier this year. While Adele has kept largely out of the spotlight during the end of her marriage, she spoke candidly about how she discussed the breakup with her son for the publications’ cover stories. 

“He said to my face, ‘Can you see me?’ And I was like, ‘Uh, yeah.’ And he was like, ‘ ‘Cause I can’t see you.’ Well, my whole life fell apart in that moment,” she recalled. “He knew I wasn’t there. That’s when I started sharing with him.” Angelo has so many “simple” questions Adele struggles to answer because she isn’t sure herself. 

“Like, ‘Why can’t we still live together?’ That’s just not what people do when they get divorced. ‘But why not?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t f-king know. That’s not what society does,’” she shared as examples. “And: ‘Why don’t you love my dad anymore?’ And I’d be like, ‘I do love your dad. I’m just not in love.’” She added, “I can’t make that make sense to a 9-year-old.”

To British Vogue, the “Rolling in the Deep” artist explained that she and Konecki luckily never fought over their son. “Angelo’s just like, ‘I don’t get it.’ I don’t really get it either,” she shared. “There are rules that are made up in society of what happens and doesn’t happen in marriage and after marriage, but I’m a very complex person. I’ve always let him know how I’m feeling from a very young age because I felt quite frazzled as an adult.”

Adele is known for her songs about heartbreak, and her upcoming album is no different. She shared that one song on the album is “obviously about stuff that happened” in her marriage, “but I wanted to put it on the album to show Angelo what I expect him to treat his partner like, whether it be a woman or a man or whatever.” She continued of moving forward with her romantic life post-divorce, “After going through a divorce, my requirements are sky-high. There’s a very big pair of shoes to fill.”