Adele explains large gaps between albums: “I chose to reject the scarcity of success”

Adele has explained why she takes a while to release new albums.

• READ MORE: Adele – ’30’ album review: dependable pop titan mixes things up

Since her debut album ’19’ came out 15 years ago, Adele has only put out three subsequent records. There was a four-year gap between the 2011 follow-up, ’21’, and 2015’s ’25’, and then another six years passed before she put out her most recent album, ’30’.

Adele commented on the long gaps between her albums when she accepted an award at The Hollywood Reporter‘s Women In Entertainment gala, explaining how getting pregnant with her son Angelo during the ’21’ cycle shaped her career and beliefs.

“Sometimes I wonder if people think I’m calculated when I disappear for years on end and I’m elusive and I believe that less is more or something like that,” she said. But the real reason that I’ve only had four albums and I don’t think that many people know this – they know that I have a child – my son is 11 years old. So if you do the math, that means that at the height of ‘21’… I fell pregnant. To many that would be, and it was, considered career suicide.

“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,” she continued. “And that perhaps, just maybe, I could be a hit both on and off the stage. And you’ll never guess what — I fucking got away with it!”

Meanwhile, Adele also recently told The Hollywood Reporter that she was “really, really nervous” after finding out Lady Gaga was in the audience at one of her shows.

“And I’ve spent a bit of time with her, but I rate her so hard,” she explained. “I was like, ‘The show’s terrible. It’s rubbish. I’m singing terribly. I’m not funny. My dress is rubbish this week.’ I was judging myself,” she continued. “She’s not like that. But she made me really, really nervous.”

“I don’t get told who’s coming. I only knew Gaga was coming. She came in disguise. Well, not in disguise, she just wasn’t dressed up,” she added.