Adele thought she had committed ‘career suicide’ after getting pregnant at 24
SUPERSTAR Adele feared she had committed “career suicide” when she fell pregnant aged 24, just as she hit the big time.
The Rolling In The Deep singer announced she was having a baby with her then-partner Simon Konecki in 2012, months after the release of her megahit album 21.
But she said she has managed to successfully juggle being a mum to her son Angelo, now 11, and her music career.
Adele, 35, made the comments as she accepted an award at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women In Entertainment gala in Los Angeles on Thursday, where she gave a candid ten-minute speech.
She explained: “It’s actually been 17 years that I’ve been a signed artist which is kind of crazy.
“Sometimes I wonder within those 17 years, whether people think that I’m calculated, you know, when I disappear for years on end, that I’m elusive and believe that less is more or something like that.
“But the real reason that I’ve only had four albums – and I don’t think that many people know this – they might know that I have a child and I’m a mum but my son is 11 years old.
“So if you do the maths, right at the height of 21, I can only call it pandemonium because that’s how it felt to me.”
She continued: “Overnight it was like I was famous, it was the strangest, most surreal experience of my life still to this day — I fell pregnant.
“To many that would be, and it was, considered career suicide.
“However, always one to go against the grain, it was there and then that I chose to reject the scarcity of success and the idea that you have to be constantly relevant to be successful and that perhaps, just maybe, I could be a hit both on and off the stage.
“And you’ll never guess what? I f***ing got away with it.”
Adele, who has recently spoken about wanting a second child, said she hasn’t even started working on her fifth album — which would be a follow-up to 2021’s 30, because she has been busy with her Las Vegas residency.
Asked if she’d had time to record new music, she said: “I have nothing to say yet. I haven’t even thought about it.”