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Adele opens up on the end of her relationship with Simon Konecki in Oprah Winfrey interview

Singer says she realised she wanted a divorce when she admitted to friends she was really unhappy

Peony Hirwani
Monday 15 November 2021 03:02 EST
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Adele says she’s not ‘fully over dismantling’ her child’s life for her own

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Adele has opened up about the moment she decided to end her relationship with ex-husband Simon Konecki in a candid new interview with Oprah Winfrey.

The 33-year-old singer recalled that she realised she wanted a divorce while talking with some friends.

“We were all answering these questions in this very bougie magazine, and it was something like, ‘What’s something that no one would ever know about you?’ And I just said it in front of three of my friends, I was like: ‘I’m really not happy. I’m not living, I’m just plodding along,’” the “Easy On Me” singer said.

“And I remember a lyric that I wrote that I put on a song on 25, which is ‘I want to live and not just survive.’ I definitely felt like that,” Adele added. “And it was when I admitted to my own friends who thought I was really happy that actually, I’m really unhappy, and they were all aghast.”

“I felt like it was sort of from there that I was like, what am I doing it for?” she added.

Adele during her interview with Oprah Winfrey
Adele during her interview with Oprah Winfrey (CBS)

Aired on 14 November, the Oprah interview was part of a two-hour US television special Adele One Night Only. The programme also included a concert featuring several new songs as well as some of Adele’s classic hits.

In the interview, Adele also revealed the real reason Konecki came into her life. The English singer said that the stability she found when she met him “probably saved [my] life”.

“He came at such a moment, where the stability that he and Angelo [their nine-year-old son] have given me, no one else would have ever been able to give me, especially at that time in my life,” Adele told Winfrey. “I could’ve easily gone down some dodgy paths, sort of self-destructive from being so overwhelmed by all of it.”

“And he came in and he was stable, the most stable person I’ve ever had in my life up until that point,” Adele added.

In the interview, Adele also opened up about her relationship with her father, the pain of missing her son, and reacted to comments about her weight loss journey.

The singer will unveil 30, her fourth studio album, on 19 November.

Adele One Night Only will be aired on CBS in the US, and also be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+. Broadcast details for the UK have not yet been unveiled.

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