Neil Mockford/GC ImagesAdele fans rejoiced this week when the Grammy and Oscar-winning singer released "Hello," the lead single from her upcoming album 25, her first major record in more than four years.
...a record that was almost never made.
Adele, 27, told BBC Radio 2 on Friday she struggled to write it and even contemplated quitting music.
"It all slowed down. Obviously, I took a lot of time off because I became a mum. I took a lot of time off for that and then when I thought I was ready to start writing, I wasn't…so I took some more time off. And then I was ready," she said. "A couple of times, I thought I'd dried up, yeah."
"There was also a period where I thought, ‘Maybe I should just go out on a high. Maybe people have heard enough of me. Maybe that's all they want to hear,'" she added. "I didn't want to come back with anything that people wouldn't like."
Adele and boyfriend Simon Konecki are parents to son Angelo, who recently turned 3. She told BBC Radio 2 she sings to her son, but that he doesn't like her music.
"So, ‘Twinkle-Twinkle,' ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat," [music from] Peppa Pig," she said, referring to an animated children's British TV show.
The notoriously private soul singer's second and most recent album, 21, was released in early 2011 and won seven Grammys. Until "Hello," her most recent music was the song "Skyfall" from the 2012 James Bond movie by the same name, which won her an Oscar.
21, which contains hit singles such as "Rolling in the Deep" and "Rumour Has It," has been dubbed a breakup or heartbreak record. Adele said earlier this week 25 is a "make-up record," adding, "I'm making up with myself. Making up for lost time."
"My ritual, when I start a new album, is I go and buy my little black leather pad and I write my age on it, in like big, black marker and it was like, ‘25' followed by about 20 exclamation marks because I didn't, I don't remember the last four years," Adele told BBC Radio 2. "Everything happened so fast, of getting there, I couldn't remember it and that made me have a yearning for everything because I couldn't remember it."
"That was what it was, is trying to reach back out to people that you just lose touch with," she said. "'Hello'—I wrote that song…I'm still not in touch with a lot of people that I wish I was and I wanted to talk to them, so I wrote a song so that they could hear me and know that I still love them very much, all of them, and they all have huge parts…in my life."
25 is set for release on Nov. 20 and Adele is already thinking about her next album. She told BBC Radio 2 her fourth major studio record will not be named after her age.