Adele says she wrote her new album to explain her divorce to her 8-year-old son: 'I voluntarily chose to dismantle his entire life'

• Adele told British Vogue that her new album will address her recent divorce.
• She said her 8-year-old son "has had a lot of questions" that she hopes to answer with music.

Adele recently opened up about her divorce and the toll it's taken on her 8-year-old son, Angelo.

For her first interview in five years, Adele told British Vogue that she wrote much of her forthcoming album in an attempt to explain the split to her child.

"My son has had a lot of questions. Really good questions, really innocent questions, that I just don't have an answer for," she said, adding the example, "Why can't you still live together?"

"I just felt like I wanted to explain to him, through this record, when he's in his twenties or thirties, who I am and why I voluntarily chose to dismantle his entire life in the pursuit of my own happiness," she continued. "It made him really unhappy sometimes. And that's a real wound for me that I don't know if I'll ever be able to heal."

Adele's divorce from Simon Konecki, the founder of the charity Drop4Drop, was finalized earlier this year. She told British Vogue that they got married in 2018 after several years together - despite previous reports indicating they wed in 2016.

"We got married when I was 30 … and then I left," she said, declining to specify the timeline. "This is very embarrassing. It wasn't very long."

"It's not like anyone's having a go at me," she added, "but it's like, I left the marriage. Be kind to me as well."

Adele recently teased her new single, "Easy on Me," which is scheduled to be released on October 15. She told British Vogue that she wrote it in 2018, the same year she got married.

"It was the first song I wrote for the album and then I didn't write anything else for six months after because I was like, 'OK, well, I've said it all,'" she said.

British Vogue's Giles Hattersley said the song's verses "recall her fraught childhood, her lost marriage and the lessons learnt and unlearnt about family, love and abandonment along the way."

Another song Hattersley heard from the album addresses the frustrations of postdivorce dating and "failings of men."

"I wanted to put it on the album to show Angelo what I expect him to treat his partner like, whether it be a woman or a man or whatever," Adele said. "After going through a divorce, my requirements are sky-high. There's a very big pair of shoes to fill."

The 33-year-old crooner explained that "nothing bad happened" in her marriage, but "it just wasn't right."

"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," she said.

Adele said her anxiety during the breakup became "so terrible" that she couldn't remember important conversations with her son: "I'd forget what I had or hadn't said to Angelo about separating."

Hattersley wrote that Adele's therapist "suggested she record voice notes of their conversations so she wouldn't wake up scared in the mornings, wondering what she'd told him," and "a snippet of one will appear on an album track."

Adele's much-anticipated fourth album is expected to be released imminently, she confirmed in the interview.

Her previous album, "25," was released in 2015 and became the No. 4 bestselling album of the 21st century. Her sophomore album, "21," remains the No. 1 bestselling album of this century since its release in 2011.

But Adele said fans shouldn't expect the same scathing, accusatory lyrics that she's become known for.

"I have to really address myself now," she said.