Inside Adele’s very non-public profession breaks, following upcoming hiatus

Adele left fans forlorn – but not surprised – as she revealed she won’t be seen for a ‘long time’ after her Las Vegas residency ends in November.

The singer, 36, is known for taking long career breaks in-between her records – having waited six years before releasing her latest album, 30, in 2021.

Admitting that she ‘hates being famous’, the star often spends the time accruing life experiences which fuel her artistry.

Despite being a global success, she has only released four albums in 13 years, which have reflected on what she has gone through over the years.

‘Sometimes I wonder if people think I’m calculated when I disappear for years on end and I’m elusive and I believe that less is more or something like that,’ she said earlier this year, while accepting an award at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women In Entertainment gala.

‘But the real reason that I’ve only had four albums and I don’t think that many people know this – they know that I have a child – my son is 11 years old.

‘So if you do the math, that means that at the height of ’21’… I fell pregnant. To many that would be, and it was, considered career suicide.

‘It was there and then that I chose to reject the scarcity of success, and the idea that you have to be constantly relevant to be successful.

‘And that perhaps, just maybe, I could be a hit both on and off the stage. And you’ll never guess what — I f***ing got away with it!’

And as the songstress has revealed she has no intention of making any new material anytime soon – and also confessed that she plans to take a break – she may just continue to keep her magic formula to success.

While loyal listeners prepare for another long hiatus before her next project, FEMAIL looks at the star’s past big career breaks – which have in turn fuelled her highly anticipated comebacks…

2012 – 2014: HIATUS AFTER INSTANT DEBUT SUCCESS 

Adele was an instant hit with her 2008 album debut, 19, and rose to global success with the follow up, 12, in 2011.

One year after becoming an international sensation and being crowned Favourite Adult Contemporary Artist, Favourite Pop/Rock Female Artist and Favorite Pop/Rock Album at the American Music Awards, she became a mother to her son Angelo, now 11, after meeting entrepreneur Simon Konecki in 2011.

It would be another four years before the star released another album, as she navigated her relationship with her first-husband-to-be and motherhood. 

Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2016, Adele opened up about a crippling bout of postpartum depression.

When asked if she plans to have another baby, Adele said she didn’t think so, explaining: ‘I’m too scared. I had really bad postpartum depression after I had my son, and it frightened me… I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I was very reluctant.’ 

She eventually followed Simon’s advice to spend time with friends of hers who were also mothers, and recalled of the ensuing conversations: ‘One day I said to a friend, “I f***in’ hate this,” and she just burst into tears and said, “I f***in’ hate this, too.”‘ 

While other mothers’ symptoms have included not wanting to be with their baby, or wanting to harm their offspring, the singer went on to explain that she was ‘obsessed’ with her child.

‘I felt very inadequate; I felt like I’d made the worst decision of my life,’ she told her interviewer Lisa Robinson. ‘Eventually I just said, I’m going to give myself an afternoon a week, just to do whatever the f**k I want without my baby.’

Adele admitted that taking regular time out for herself often left her feeling guilty, but she believes it’s the best way to get through the challenges of being a new mother to Angelo, who has an older sister from Simon’s previous marriage. 

The singer had also encountered her first major health issue that would impact her career back in 2011, when she was forced to undergo ‘vocal cord microsurgery’ to remove a benign polyp that forced her to cancel a series of gigs. 

Aged 23 at the time, Adele underwent the operation per a statement from the Massachusetts General Hospital in the American city of Boston. 

Posting on Instagram at the time, Adele said: ‘If I continue to pick up everything before I have properly conquered these problems and nipped them in the bud, I will be totally and utterly f****d,’ she explained on her blog last month. 

‘Singing is literally my life, it’s my hobby, my love, my freedom and now my job.’

In 2015, Adele had released 25 – her third album. 

Speaking about the journey it took to bring it to life, including balancing health issues with her voice, the star explained she needed the time out to find lived material to put into her music.

‘Everyone thinks I just disappeared, and I didn’t,’ she told the New York Times. ‘I just went back to real life, because I had to write an album about real life, because otherwise how can you be relatable? If I wrote about being famous – that’s… boring.’

The star also admitted that she didn’t want to focus her new music entirely on being a mother – although it undeniably has featured as a theme – because not all her listeners would be able to relate to it. 

As reported by Rolling Stone, she told SiriusXM that 25 was her ‘make-up album’ as opposed to 21, which was dubbed her ‘break-up album’.

‘There is some darkness on it just because I like to do dramatic, I’m a bit of a drama queen,’ she explained.

‘It’s not as themed as my last record. The reason I labeled it a “make-up record,” it sounds super cliché, but my last record was labeled a “break-up record,” and rightly so, because it was a break-up record.

‘This record is all about how I feel as opposed to how someone else has made me feel, it’s about how I made myself feel.’

2016 – 2020: DIVORCE AND PARENTHOOD

After 25’s release, it would be another six years before fans would see another album from Adele.

However, during this period – the better part of half a decade – the star not only experienced her first marriage, but also endured a divorce, more health struggles with her voice – and finding new love. 

Adele and Simon started dating in 2011 and documents filed to court suggest that they were married on the eve of her 30th birthday, in May 2018. 

It was later reported that her Titanic-themed 30th birthday party was actually a wedding celebration.

She had said in a BBC Radio 1 interview: ‘We got married when I was 30 . . . and then I left. I’m not gonna go into that detail. Remember I am embarrassed. This is very embarrassing. It wasn’t very long.’

They announced their separation in April 2019, less than a year on, but she said she made the announcement ‘much later’ than the split actually happened.

She told one interviewer that the intro to her break-up anthem, Easy On Me, came to her in the shower in 2018, suggesting the relationship was all over within seven months at the most.

Speaking to American Vogue in 2021 – in her first interview in five years – Adele revealed she hoped her new album, in which she sings about her divorce, will help Angelo understand what happened when he’s older. 

She explained: ‘He has so many simple questions for me that I can’t answer, because I don’t know the answer. 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***ing know. That’s not what society does.” 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. I can’t make that make sense to a nine-year-old.”‘ 

Adele also admitted she struggled with talking to their son about her separation, causing her so much anxiety that her therapist suggested she record herself speaking to Angelo so she could remember what had been said. 

She told British Vogue: ‘Obviously Simon and I never fought over him or anything like that. Angelo’s just like, “I don’t get it.”

‘I don’t really get it either. 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.’ 

She added: ‘When I was 30, my entire life fell apart and I had no warning of it.’

Yet insisting there was no bad blood between the pair, she added: ‘It just wasn’t… It just wasn’t right for me any more. I didn’t want to end up like a lot of other people I knew. 

‘I wasn’t miserable miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first. But, yeah, nothing bad happened or anything like that.’

Despite their separation, Adele stated she had no regrets, saying she chose the ‘perfect person’ to have a child with.

In 2021, she is also understood to have began her relationship with Rich Paul, a sports agent. 

The couple first went public with their relationship in July of that year, when they were seated courtside together at an NBA game.

All of her newly-lived experiences – including the Covid-19 pandemic which saw her and her son Angelo locking down together in Los Angeles – were behind the roaring success that was her album, 30, released in 2021.

Speaking to NPR, the singer explained how the record explored her fear of leaving a stable situation.

‘I think a lot of people tend to think that the person that leaves a relationship or leaves a marriage is fine, and that they’ve got the power of their choice,’ she said.

‘That’s not the case at all, not that I ever expected to feel like that. It was one of the biggest decisions that’s ever made in my life, and it was a lot for me to forgive myself for doing something like that, you know? But also, there was no anger. There was no anger in any of it.

‘I really, really went to town on myself, like, “What is it that I want, if I’m leaving such a stable scenario?” And, you know, “”What is it I want if I’m leaving someone who’s a brilliant person all ’round?” Stuff like that. I really had to go on that journey. And in the end, I’ve made so much progress that I wanted to share all of [these] songs that explored that.’

Adele also said creating the album guided her through her thirties – even thought it ‘brought her to hell and back’.

Discussing the record with Apple Music, she shared: ‘It was like it really helped me, this album. It really, really did. And I truly do believe, like when we started the interview where I was like, “There’s not an occasion or a scenario or a feeling where there is not the perfect song for it somewhere.” I really do believe, and I’m not being arrogant or anything like that here, it’s just like, it was my hell, but I really went to hell and back.

‘I realized, I actually didn’t like who I was. And I think I just really got, like most other human beings, especially of my age, really just got into that thing of just going through the motions. Like I’ve got to get over there.’

Covid was also a big factor that delayed Adele – and many other musicians and creatives. While fans were hankering for new music, the singer took to Insta to scold listeners that ‘Corona ain’t over’ and urged people to ‘be patient’.

In 2021 however, the star sent her admirers into meltdown with a hilarious Instagram live, where she confirmed that her upcoming would be about ‘divorce, babe, divorce’.

The Grammy winner began her Vegas residency in November 2022, after the shows were postponed by nearly a year. 

Just hours before she was due to kick off her residency in January of that year, Adele revealed that the shows had been delayed, sparking fan uproar.

Adele’s initial video revealing that the show would not proceed led to pandemonium for fans who had already traveled to Vegas for the initial shows just before the last-minute announcement.

She wept as she explained to fans that she had ‘tried everything’ to get her show up and running but Covid had ‘destroyed’ everything.

Adele went onto admit that staging issues forced her to postpone the residency in an interview with Elle in August of that year. 

‘There was just no soul in it,’ she said. ‘The stage setup wasn’t right. It was very disconnected from me and my band, and it lacked intimacy. And maybe I tried too hard to give it those things in such a controlled environment.’

Although she was initially ’embarrassed’ after the failure, she eventually found a way to be ‘proud’ of herself for standing up for the best possible show.

‘The first couple of months was really, really hard,’ she said. ‘I was embarrassed. But it actually made my confidence in myself grow, because it was a very brave thing to do. And I don’t think many people would have done what I did. I’m very proud of myself for standing by my artistic needs.’

2024: ‘BIG BREAK’ FROM MUSIC AFTER ENGAGEMENT NEWS

This week, Adele revealed that she will be taking a ‘big break’ from music – after last month confirming her engagement to Rich Paul last month.

The music mogul doubled down on her plans for a hiatus from music onstage Saturday during the final night of her 10-show engagement in Munich, Germany.

On stage at her Las Vegas residency in May, Adele had also told fans she wanted to have a baby ‘once she was done with all obligations and her shows’.

The singer told fans she was ‘getting married’ and flashed her diamond ring while addressing the audience at the purpose-built, 80,000-seat outdoor arena. 

Adele and the Klutch Sports Group founder, 42, who have been dating since 2021, secretly got engaged after he proposed in her hometown.

Reading out a sign in the audience which read ‘will you marry me?,’ Adele responded: ‘I can’t marry you because I’m already getting married!’ 

She performed the first of her ten dates in Munich last weekend as an incredible 75,000 fans attended in the purpose built stadium for the star.

The residency also appears to have brought on health challenges for Adele.

In August 2023, she had also revealed to fans that she collapsed backstage before a performance due to a sciatica attack, according to The Sun.

She allegedly told fans: ‘They picked my whole body up off the floor.’

Adele also was forced to sit down during her Weekends With Adele performance, explaining: ‘I am going to sit down and rest my sciatica.’

Per the NHS, sciatica is ‘where the sciatic nerve, which runs from your lower back to your feet, is irritated or compressed’.

It can cause shooting pains, a sensation of cramp and can be so severe it leaves someone unable to walk.

Earlier last year Adele detailed her chronic back pain during another Las Vegas show as she hobbled across the stage.

While talking to the crowd, she fired t-shirts towards members of the audience using a handheld cannon, and saying: ‘I’ve got two more, I’ve just got to get over to the other side of the stage.

‘I have to waddle these days because I have really bad sciatica,’ Adele added in the video obtained by the Daily Star.

Adele has previously discussed being in pain for ‘half her life’, prior to losing weight and how her body overhaul has helped her cope with her problems.

However, it would appear the singer will be off-grid in the near future – and fans can only hope she returns with yet another incredible record at the end of it all.