It's hard not to get overly excited about Adele being back with a new record (that voice!) after a hiatus from 21 to 25. Her first interview in three years is typical Adele - funny, brutally frank - whether she's talking fame, music or motherhood.
Of this, the British singer-songwriter cuts to the chase:
"It's fucking hard. I thought it would be easy," she says in i-D magazine of her son, Angelo James Konecki, who just turned three. "'Everyone fucking does it, how hard can it be? I had no idea. It is hard but it's phenomenal. It's the greatest thing I ever did.
"[My son] makes me be a dickhead, and he makes me feel young and there's nothing more grounding than a kid kicking off and refusing to do what you're asking of them. It used to be that my own world revolved around me, but now it has to revolve around him."
Nailed it, right?
"I gave birth a few nights before the Skyfall premiere, that's why I didn't do anything for it. He was about to drop out my fanny at, like, any moment." If she wasn't so good at singing, you'd want producers to hand the lady her own talk show. She is to Britain what Ellen is to America.
Adele describes how leaving her baby behind to record her video for the first single, Hello, as "the most exhausting thing ever." She filmed with our own award-winning actor/director Xavier Dolan in Toronto.
But it wasn't always thus. Music wasn't always in the cards for Adele. At one point, spurred by the death of her granddad, she wanted to be a heart surgeon. Then music came along, and upon hearing her cut of Someone Like You, her mother declared: "You are a surgeon. You're fixing people's hearts."
Adele credits Amy Winehouse's Frank for driving her to pick up a guitar. Yet even though she cleared up on the award front in 2011, fame is something Adele goes out of her way to avoid. She still lives in the UK and is determined to stay true to her Tottenham working-class roots.
"I get worried of [friends and family] looking at me going into the smoke and never coming out. It's a bit toxic, fame. I've got enough toxins in me body, I don't need any of that!"
I love that she isn't on social media 24/7 working her brand. Like the musicians of yore, Adele focuses on the product, and leaves promotion to others. And if it takes years for the music to come, then so be it.
Looks like the hiatus has paid off. Hello has already had over 110 million views on YouTube.
The new songs are all about something moms can relate to - letting go.
"I think the album is about trying to clear out the past. Becoming a parent and moving past my mid-20s, I simply don't have the capacity to worry about as many things that I used to really enjoy worrying about ... Life is so much easier when you don't hoard your past."
RELATED: Adele: Behind the Story 
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