Adele’s announcement that she’s planning to take a break from music might feel like a bombshell, but millions of women at a similar life stage will be nodding knowingly. Yes! Adele is done with the mental load too!
“My tank is quite empty at the minute,” the singer told German broadcaster ZDF ahead of her run of Munich shows. “I don’t have any plans for new music at all. I want a big break after all this and I think I want to do other creative things just for a little while.”
She added: “Everything makes me angry. Absolutely everything. I’m 36 years old. I’m old and grumpy now.”
Us too, Adele, us too! At 36, Adele has been singing professionally for almost 20 years. And whether you’re an international pop star with 16 Grammys or a marketing manager with 16 crumpled “employee of the month” certificates, two decades of grind starts to get draining.
There’s also the fact that the singer’s son Angelo, 11, isn’t a baby anymore. While Adele has hinted that she sees more kids in her future, she’ll also be wondering whether she really wants to go back to changing diapers and juggle all that with raising a teenager, alongside her massive career.
Plus, she might be realizing that, while older kids might be way less exhausting than dealing with sleep deprivation and breast pumps, they come with their own challenges — you spend your life giving them rides, bribing them into doing their homework and battling over screen time. And that’s all while trying to prioritize your relationship (Adele has been with sports agent Rich Paul for three years now), stay on top of your health and fitness and keep up with your family and friends. Who has the time to put the laundry away, let alone get it together enough to record another album of classic ballads for other frazzled moms to belt out after a glass or two of Sauvignon Blanc?!
OK, so Adele probably has someone she pays to put her laundry away, but you get the idea. Because, despite her staggering talent and wealth, Adele has always been pretty relatable, and her late thirties burn-out just confirms it. So many women at this life stage are going through the same thing as Adele. They end up quitting their jobs and retraining as interior designers, pilates instructors and life coaches or, if quitting isn’t a luxury they can contemplate, suddenly getting into something new: photography, paddle-boarding, fitness — and Adele’s already nailed that one!
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It might be sad to imagine a long period without a new Adele album, but she doesn’t owe us anything. And actually, she’s part of a global trend — sabbaticals are having a moment. According to Forbes, female millennials are the most likely to be feeling burned out and in need of a break from the hamster wheel. While it’s fair to say that Adele, with over 100 million equivalent album sales, probably isn’t hit too hard by some of the stress factors cited, like childcare costs and the gender pay gap, she’s still a human being who’s been working hard for a long time.
Plus, what would an album called “36” be about anyway — devastating fights over the Nintendo Switch, heartbreak about leaving it too late to book your favorite Barre class and the despair of those long lonely nights googling “is it PMS or could it be perimenopause?”?
So, enjoy your well-earned break, Adele. Get into gardening, write a children’s book, do some hot yoga, complete an ultramarathon, organize your closets — we’ll still be here whenever you come back, even if the next album ends up being called 52.
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