In a new interview with 60 Minutes Australia this past Sunday night, Adele talked how scary the success of her sophomore album 21 was for her. In the very honest interview, she reflected on the success of that album and the potential reasons behind waiting another 5 years to release her new album 25, which dropped November 20. She freely admits in the interview (video itself only available to those within the Australian viewing area) that she struggles with the idea of being famous and has a lot of nerves surrounding it.
"There are, or were, elements of what happened with 21 that really frightened me," Billboard reported she said on air. "It got so out of control, and it got so big... it just grew limbs of it's own and started doing marathon runs."
When the interviewer Liz Hayes asked her to elaborate further Adele said, "I mean, how is it possible that an album can keep getting bigger and bigger? The fact that I was frightened by it and distanced myself was for no other reason than to live a real life, to write a real record, that's the only reason." Her sophomore effort 21 sold 30 million units worldwide and put her on the map as a superstar in her own right.
She further said, "How am I supposed to write a real record people can relate to if I'm doing un-relatable things? It's impossible. So that's why I backed off." In the interview, Adele also admitted that she had never expected to become as famous as she did and that the long period between 21 and 25 gave her anxiety on how her new album would be received by fans.
But as it turns out Adele had little reason to worry, since 25 has been predicted to break Nielson era sales and smash NSYNC's industry record of 2.42 million sold in a single week. It was just released three days ago, but fans have already ripped through 900,000 copies of Adele's new album from iTunes on the exact day that it went on sale.
