The hit song Adele only wrote to fulfil her record contract
It seemed like Adele was tapped to be a star from the very beginning of her career. After graduating from the same Brit School class as Jessie J, the young singer was signed to XL only a few months after graduating. While she was still a teenager, she recorded her debut LP 19 in 2008, the same album that contained her first fit single, ‘Chasing Pavements’.
“That song is about should I give up or should I just keep trying to run after you when there’s nothing there?” Adele told the British press in 2008. “I was only with him for four months, but when I signed my record deal, I had to write an album, as I hardly had any songs, so I wrote about him.”
“I couldn’t write songs for ages because I found it really hard writing songs for fun or writing them because someone had invested a lot of money and time in me,” she added. “I just couldn’t do it. And then I met my ex-boyfriend, and it was great to begin with, and then it was really shitty. And then I wrote about ten songs in about five weeks.”
‘Chasing Pavements’ was the mainstream breakthrough for Adele, topping out at number two on the UK Singles Chart and just missing out of the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 21. For Adele, the song proved to be adequate for both her and her ex.
“I love him still, and I got an album out of him,” she claimed. “I used him more than he used me. And he loves it. It’s not bitter. He loves it when the song comes on the radio. He says: ‘It’s about me.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s a song about heartbreak, you fool!'”
The only problem was that her ex-boyfriend initially wanted royalties for inspiring the song. “For about a week, he was calling and was deadly serious about it,” she said. “Finally, I said, ‘Well, you made my life hell, so I lived it, and now I deserve it.’ He really thought he’d had some input into the creative process by being a prick. I’ll give him this credit – he made me an adult and put me on the road that I’m travelling.”
Check out ‘Chasing Pavements’ down below.
