How Adele’s son Angelo helped her ‘break through’ with emotional voice notes on 30 album

Adele has opened up about how her son helped her 'emotionally' with his voice notes on her latest record, revealing the experience was a 'big breakthrough' for her. 

The Easy on Me singer has spoken candidly about her son Angelo's involvement in My Little Love, the third track on the widely-acclaimed Adele 30 album. 

The British superstar wrote the emotional song over two years ago, to process her divorce from Simon Konecki and to explain her complex feelings to the then six-year-old child. The tune gives fans a rare insight into Adele’s struggles as a single mother, featuring a poignant recorded conversation between the 33-year-old and Angelo in the aftermath of his parents’ separation. It comes as just another fascinating peek into the famously private entertainer's personal life (we're still reeling from our trip to Adele's house) ahead of the highly-anticipated Adele tour 2022. 

Angelo, who enjoys a relatively normal childhood away from the spotlight, can be heard in My Little Love’s bridge telling his mom, “I love you a million percent”, only to later say, “I feel like you don't love me” and “I feel like you don’t like me.” 

Despite now living in Los Angeles, the adorable infant’s English accent is clearly audible in each of the recordings. The sweet bond between Adele and Angelo is also palpable, with the Hello singer telling her darling son, “I love your dad 'cause he gave you to me. You're half me and you're half daddy.” At another point, she attempts to explain her post-separation confusion to Angelo, admitting, "I don't really know what I'm doing." 

The heartwarming spoken words alternate with powerful lyrics such as, “I know you feel lost, it's my fault completely” and “I'm so sorry if what I've done makes you feel sad.” 

Speaking to CBC’s Tom Power for a sit-down interview on Friday, the Grammy-award-winner revealed why she chose to include the intimate voice notes on the 6:29 minute track. 

‘It was going on his journey as well as my own, to make it more personal,” she said. 

“I thought it would be nice to let people in a little bit more, you know? I don’t share very much of my life, I normally really only share my music. And people have been so curious about where I’m going and where I’m at, just in my life, not in terms of being nosy but just like, ‘I hope she’s ok’...I just thought it was a really important song that I wanted to capture people’s imagination as much as possible, that’s why I put me and Angelo in it.” 

The song concludes with a voice note that Adele sent to a friend after putting Angelo to bed, in which she confesses to feeling “stressed”, “anxious” and “paranoid.” 

“Afterwards I just completely fell apart. And I’m not ashamed of it,” she said. "It was definitely a big breakthrough, emotionally, not just musically." 

The Tottenham native went on to reveal how people have reacted differently to the song based on their gender. "I've found that it affects men, more than women," she said. "The people that I've played it to or that have heard it... the women are like, 'I feel like that a lot of the time, like I'm struggling with my motherhood, whereas I feel like the men I played it to have never considered how their mum might have felt outside of being their mum."