Adele is opening up about how her personal life, including her divorce from Simon Konecki, inspired “Hold On” — one of the new songs on her upcoming album “30″ — telling Oprah Winfrey the phrase deeply affected her as she went through rebuilding her life after the split.
On Friday, CBS This Morning aired an exclusive clip from Oprah Winfrey’s sitdown with the Brit and asked her about “Hold On’s” lyrics, in particular: “I swear to God, I’m such a mess/The harder that I try, I regress/I am my own worst enemy/right now I truly hate being me/Every day feels like the road I’m on might just open up and swallow me whole/How do I feel so mighty small when I’m struggling to feel at all?”
Asked what she held on to, Adele explained the title came from the encouragement her friends offered as she dealt with her marriage ending and she transitioned from a couple to a single mother.
“My friends always would say, ‘Hold on’ when I would feel like how, like, the lyrics in the verse, but it was just exhausting, trying to — to like, keep going with it,” Adele explained. “It’s a process — the process of a divorce, the process of being a single parent, the process of not seeing your child every single day wasn’t really a plan that I had when I became a mum.”
As she continued, Adele told Winfrey that relearning to stand on her own took time.
“The process of arriving for yourself every single day, turning up for yourself every single day, and still running a home, running a business, like, so many people know what I’m talking about and I feel like that as well,” she added. “I juggle those things as well and I felt like not doing it anymore. And also trying to like, move forward, like, a bit like, with intention, not just trying to get out of it for no reasons. My feet hurt walking through all that concrete.”
Winfrey’s interview with Adele airs as part of “Adele One Night Only” Sunday at 8:30 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT on CBS, and Paramount+.
You can check out the clip below.
