Adele: I 'bawled my eyes out' while writing 'Easy On Me'

Writing "Easy On Me" was hard on Adele.

"It was the first song that I wrote for the album, so going back to the beginning of 2019, really," the 33-year-old told Greg James for BBC Radio 1. "I was quite shocked that I got at it straight away. Like, you know, I hadn't been back in the studio for like four, five years before that. It was just, you know, I was making decisions in my life, which have been well-documented over the last few years."

She continued: 

"It was just like, you can initiate something and be like, 'Hang on a minute, go easy on me!' It was just like, be like, 'Bear with me while I try and find my feet in a situation.' There's something that's really hopeful about it, as well as sad. I mean, I obviously bawled my eyes out when I was writing it and when I singing it for the recording and stuff like that. But there's an element of hope in it, which in turn gave me hope because I was at my wits' ends in the beginning of 2019."

"Easy On Me," which arrived late Thursday with an accompanying music video, is the lead single for the 15-time Grammy winner's highly anticipated fourth studio album 30, due Nov. 19.

As the first simultaneous cover star for British Vogue and Vogue last week, Adele referred to 2019 as her "Year of Anxiety." She filed for divorce from Simon Konecki in September 2019, and the split was finalized in March of this year. The amicable exes share a nine-year-old son named Angelo.

Adele's last album, 25, came all the way back in November 2015.

Watch the music video for "Easy On Me"—the visual has generated over 34 million views in 20 hours—as well as Adele's full interview with James below.