Adele thinks she 'got away' with 'career suicide' after getting pregnant at peak fame
Singer Adele believes she has worked the system – attaining success as both a professional and as a parent – simultaneously.
The recipient of the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment Gala, Adele dispelled rumors that she is strategic in the release of her music. Despite being a signed artist for nearly two decades, Adele has only released four albums.
"Sometimes I wonder within those 17 years, if like, people think that I'm calculated, you know, when I disappear for years on end. That I'm ‘elusive, and I believe less is more.’ You know, something like that. But the real reason 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 that I'm a mum – but my son is 11 years old," she said of her boy Angelo, whom she shares with ex-husband Simon Konecki.
Adele explained she got pregnant right at the "height of ‘21," her second studio album. "I could only call it pandemonium 'cause that's how it felt to me. Overnight, it was like I was famous. It was the strangest, most surreal experience of my life still to this day."
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"To many that would be – and it was – considered career suicide," she noted.
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Acknowledging she is "always one to go against the grain," Adele said she "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," she joked to the lively crowd.
Adele then attributed her success to other women in the industry who set a precedent that being a successful professional and parent are not mutually exclusive.
"It's because of them that I have every right to be the boss at work and the boss at home," Adele added.
She was joined at the event by her beau Rich Paul, whom she is rumored to have married. During her speech, however, the singer referred to Paul as her boyfriend.
She is currently on break from her Las Vegas residency "Weekends with Adele."