13 Things We Learnt From Adele’s First Interview In Three Years

This may make you cry...

Adele is finally back in our lives, and we couldn’t be happier. The down-to-earth lady with the stratospheric voice has taken a long hiatus from the music world – but she’s finally ready to share her third album with us.

In her first interview for three years, with i-D, we learnt a whole lot that we didn’t know about the songstress…

She wanted to be a doctor when she was little

When she was 10, the death of Adele’s grandpa devastated her. ‘I loved him so much, more than the world,’ she says. His death prompted her to become a heart surgeon: ‘I wanted to fix people's hearts.’ she says. But after throwing herself into biology lessons at school, she eventually gave up on her surgical dreams, saying her ‘heart wasn’t in it’. But the first time her mum heard Someone Like You, she said: 'You are a surgeon. You're fixing people's hearts.'

She writes her bestselling albums in a little notebook

‘I do it every album,’ she says. ‘I buy a new pad, sniff it - 'cause smell is important - and then I get a big, fat sharpie and write my age on the front page. 25 has five exclamation marks after it 'cause I was like, 'How the fuck did that happen?!' 21 to 25.’

She thinks more and more about what might have been

She misses the everyday life before fame, fortune and parenthood hit, like sitting in the park drinking cider with her friends. ‘Those were the most real and best moments of my life and I wish I'd known that I wasn't going to be able to sit in the park and drink a bottle of cider again. I think the album is about trying to clear out the past. Becoming a parent and moving past my mid-twenties, I simply don't have the capacity to worry about as many things that I used to really enjoy worrying about.’

She doesn’t worry as much anymore

She tells i-D that she used to ‘fucking love the drama of all of [worrying]… but now I'm a mum I only have so much head space. I've got to clear a lot of stuff the fuck out, which is really therapeutic, 'cause I can really hold a grudge. Life is so much easier when you don't hoard your past.’

The new album won’t be like 21

‘I was very conscious not to make 21 again,’ she says in the interview. ‘I definitely wasn't going to write a heartbreak record 'cause I'm not heartbroken, but I probably won't be able to better the one I did, so what's the point?... Also, how I felt when I wrote 21, it ain't worth feeling like that again. I was very sad and very lonely. Regardless of being a mum or a girlfriend, I didn't want to feel like that again.’

She liked acting for the Hello video, which was a surprise

When shooting the video, director Xavier Dolan made her act, which she was surprised to find that she actually liked. ‘He said I was quite good,’ she says. ‘I had to cry and everything. You know what, I feel like a bit of a cunt after saying for all these years I'd never act, because I really enjoyed it.’

She finds being a parent ‘fucking hard’

Leaving her son Angelo at home while shooting the video for Hello was ‘the most exhausting thing ever, being without my baby.’ She tells i-D that being a mum is ‘fucking hard. I thought it would be easy. “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. He 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.’

Hello is really about wanting to be home

‘The song is about hurting someone's feelings but it's also about trying to stay in touch with myself, which sometimes can be a little bit hard to do,’ she says. ‘It's about a yearning for the other side of me. When I'm away, I really, really miss my life at home. The way that I feel when I'm not in England, is desperation. I can't breathe anywhere else… I'm so attached to my whole life here. I get worked up that I'm missing out on things. So Hello is about wanting to be at home and wanting to reach out to everyone I've ever hurt - including myself - and apologise for it.’

Hello is definitely not about her ex

She is unequivocal about the fact that she is well and truly over the man who inspired Someone Like You. ‘Oh, god no. That's over and done with, thank fuck. That's been over and done with for fucking years,’ she says. ‘No, it's not about anyone specifically. It's about friends, ex-boyfriends, it's about myself, it's about my family. It's also about my fans as well. I feel like everyone thinks I'm so far away and I'm not. Everyone thinks I live in fucking America, I don't. Sometimes I think people worry about chatting to me, that I've changed. But I like to think I haven't. I don't feel like I have.’

Adele gets the morning after drinking fear too

Talking about one of her upcoming singles, Adele says that a ‘drunk tongue is an honest one. That's definitely my motto, in life. That's why I don't really like drinking no more. The panic you get when you wake up the next morning.’ She couldn’t contain her excitement when she met Stevie Nicks

‘I was sobbing all over her, oh my god,’ she told the magazine. ‘I don't really like crying in front of famous people because it's awkward and it can make them feel really uncomfortable. But I couldn't contain myself.’

She thinks her hiatus was much-needed

‘Sometimes I wonder if I've missed it by a year, bringing it back,’ she says. ‘But you know, I was being a mum. I couldn't rush it. And you've got to give people a chance to miss you.’

She credits Amy Winehouse with her music career…

‘If it wasn't for Amy and Frank, one hundred per cent I wouldn't have picked up a guitar, I wouldn't have written Daydreamer or Hometown and I wrote Someone Like You on the guitar too,’ she says. ‘Contrary to reports, me and Amy didn't really know each other, we weren't friends or anything like that. I went to Brit School and she went for a little while. But a million per cent if I hadn't heard Frank this wouldn't have happened. I adored her.’

…But she felt deeply uncomfortable watching Amy ‘I did see it, yeah,’ she says. ‘I wasn't going to. I loved her and I went through my own massive grieving process as her fan. I'd finally got to a place where I felt really great about the impact she'd had on my life, in every way. I felt really, really fond of it all. But then I read this review of it and that made me go and see it. I got super emotional with the funeral footage. But I wasn't really that into the saved voicemails and stuff like that. I felt like I was intruding so I actually felt a little bit uncomfortable and that ruined it for me. I love watching her, but I kind of wish I hadn't seen it. But you know, I love Amy. I always have, I always will. Do you know what makes me super sad? That I'm never going to hear her voice again, other than how I've heard it.’

She got stage fright before her Brits performance

‘I never thought it would change my life the way it did,’ she says. ‘I'd been shitting myself about standing on that fucking B-stage on my fucking own, belting it out. I thought everyone was gonna boo me off.’

She worries about fame changing her

‘It's basically a bit like Stars In Their Eyes when you go into the smoke and you come out as someone else,’ she says. ‘I get worried of them 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!’