During the final date of her residency in Munich, Germany, over the weekend, Adele announced that she’s taking a break from music. There are 10 shows left this fall in Las Vegas, but “after that, I will not see you for an incredibly long time,” the “Easy On Me” singer told the crowd. She explained that she’s “spent the last seven years building a new life for myself,” including raising a kid and getting engaged to sports agent Rich Paul, “and I want to live it now. I want to live my new life that I’ve been building and I’ll miss you terribly.”
Whether that “incredibly long time” is five months or five years remains to be seen, but if anyone can take an indefinite hiatus from music and come back bigger than ever, it’s Adele.
Is it crazy to say that we take Adele for granted? You and I and everyone else on planet Earth has heard “Hello” and “Someone Like You” and “When We Were Young” 30,000 times each, usually in grocery stores or Target or while walking around the mall. It’s gotten to the point where something as titanic as “Make You Feel My Love” (the modern-day “All Along The Watchtower” where it’s surpassed the Bob Dylan original in popularity) is a comforting, familiar white noise. But after learning about Adele’s break, I — as the meme goes— sat my ass down and listened to 21 for the first time in years. When I heard the controlled cracks in her voice in “Rolling In The Deep” or the soaring chorus of “Set Fire To The Rain” like it’s 2011 all over again, I was reminded why Adele is arguably the most successful singer of the past 15 years.
Adele’s career achievements defy belief. In 2008, she released her debut album, 19, which has only gone eight times platinum. Yes, “only,” because her follow up, 21, has moved over 31 million copies worldwide. It was the top-selling album in both 2011 and 2012 — and the decade. 21 is one of only two albums released since 2000 on the list of the 30 highest-selling albums of all-time. The other? The Beatles’ 1. If your success is being favorably compared to The Beatles, you’re doing something right.
Adele returned in 2015 with 25, which sold a record 3.38 million copies during its first week of release in the United States. That, more than any other statistical achievement in her career, is the one I find the hardest to comprehend. That opening week is nearly one million more than the previous title-holder, *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached. It’s difficult for an artist these days to sell one million total copies of an album.
But Adele has always been an artist out of time. She’s an old school diva, in the most complimentary sense of the term, during an era that favors relatability over vocal prowess. But she’s also a uniquely glamorous goofball, someone who enjoys playing with a t-shirt cannon as much as she does performing with an orchestra. It’s this dichotomy that makes her fascinating as a person, a singer, and a celebrity, even if she would bristle at the use of the word.
Adele has long been outspoken about her uneasy relationship with being famous and the drawbacks that come with turning something you’re good at — in her case, singing the word “hello” like no one ever has before — into your career. “My hobby became my job,” she said in 2021. “Fame scares me.” In a separate interview from that year, she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, “I think it’s hilarious that I’m an artist for my f*cking job. But celebrity comes with it, and I’m not out for that. I don’t like being a celebrity at all.”
Suddenly, her “incredibly long” break sounds long overdue, especially with the health issues she’s had with her voice. And it comes with a rare advantage: Adele has already accomplished so much in her career — the sales, the streaming numbers, three-fourths of an EGOT (all that’s missing is the Tony) — that she can release new music only if she wants to.
Besides, it’s not like Adele is disappearing from her day job for good. She’s taking time for herself and for her family (she’s also expressed interest in script reading). It was four years between 21 and 25, and six years between 25 and 30, and both of those breaks turned out well. “I just went back to real life, because I had to write an album about real life, because otherwise how can you be relatable?” she told The New York Times about one of her pauses in recording new music and touring. “If I wrote about being famous — that’s f*cking boring.” Adele is a lot of things, but boring isn’t one of them. She ought to take all the time she needs.