Adele Shares the Stories Behind ‘Easy on Me,’ ‘Hello’ & More Songs: Watch

Glenn Rowley
·2 min read
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Adele dished on the stories behind her catalog of smash hits on Monday (Aug. 15) in a new video for ELLE.

“I think my lyrics have probably changed a bit over time in terms of my vocabulary growing, considering that I started out when I was 19,” she said while playing “Life in Lyrics” with the magazine. “Definitely read loads more books and stuff like that since then. So I think my imagination has grown and therefore my lyrics have progressed.

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“But, you know, they always tell about the same thing: me,” the singer continued. “And, seemingly, my failed relationships. Which is crazy ’cause I actually don’t feel like that, but yeah.”

From there, Adele spills on the tea on the stories behind some of her most touching on hits such as “Easy on Me,” “Hello,” “Chasing Pavements,” “Someone Like You” and more.

“It makes me think about how lost I was when I left my marriage,” the hitmaker said after reading a lyric from “Easy on Me.” “A lot of my friends throughout that rainy period of my life kept saying to me that, ‘You have to go easy on yourself, don’t beat yourself up too much about your decisions’ and stuff like that, and, you know, ‘You’ve just got to give it time,’ and it just really, really stuck with me that, like, I have to be kind to myself.”

She also served up some songwriting criticism for her younger self, saying, “I do remember that on 19, I always use the word ’cause.’ It’s so lazy. One time, I was in the studio with Sia, and I kept being, like, ’cause’ or ‘but’ and ‘and,’ and she was like, ‘We don’t do those words. We don’t do those words, we don’t use words like that. It’s just, like, lazy.’ But clearly I’m lazy.”

Later, the superstar admitted with a cheeky wink that 25-era album cut “All I Ask” is “absolutely about having sex and then never seeing each other again.” (“I’ve actually never done that,” she joked. “‘F–k off!’ That’s what I say.”) She also confessed that while she “can figure [her] way around a piano,” she actually doesn’t know how to play the instrument, and writes using her guitar.

In the accompanying cover story, Adele also opened up about the difficult decision to cancel her Las Vegas residency, which has finally been rescheduled to begin this coming November after a nearly yearlong wait. She also addressed rumors she’s engaged to boyfriend Rich Paul, whom she admitted she’s “obsessed” with.

Watch Adele charm her way through “Life in Lyrics” below.

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