Leave it to Adele to make our heads spin after her 73 Questions interview with Vogue [1]. Exactly one week after releasing "Easy on Me", her first single in five years [2], the singer answered a few questions about her life since her last album release and treated us to a surprise mini concert in her back garden at her Los Angeles home. Of course, we were charmed hearing about Adele's start doing gigs at pubs in London and talking about the difference between British English and American English. But the true draw of her interview was the confusing mathematical equation she made us figure out at the end of the video.
"The best advice I ever got was to keep your heart safe and your music dangerous, and I live by that."
At the start of the video, Adele — dressed in a track suit despite the 90-degree weather — unloaded some groceries while talking about everything from her throat surgery to the "drunk, chaotic, stressed, very, very sad" diaries she kept while writing 21 and how she doesn't love being recognised in public. "Ever since 21 sort of came out, really, my hair gets bigger, my makeup gets thicker, and my dresses get bigger so that I practically look like a bald eagle or something like that in day-to-day life," she said, pointing out that her ever-changing looks make her difficult to spot IRL.
Even though Adele says she won't be releasing an alternate version of 21 anytime soon, she does have fond memories from that time in her life. "I was falling apart and [my mum] lovingly put me back together," she said, recalling that her mum moved in during a very painful time and helped her greatly. "The best advice I ever got was to keep your heart safe and your music dangerous, and I live by that," she added, mentioning that her fourth studio album, 30 [3], is her most personal yet.
More recently, Adele has taken her mum's advice about "chilling out" as a parent and spent most of her time taking care of her son, Angelo Adkins [5]. She was so chill, in fact, that she had no problem bursting into a 10-second snippet of "Hello" in her backyard and putting the recording through a chipmunk filter for a laugh.
And she kept the fun and games going (and going) by extending the interview from 73 questions to 95, hinting that the number might have something to do with her new album title. Given that we've known the new album is called 30 for a while, it's possible the interview was meant to go up sooner, but the mystery behind 95 is still a fun one to solve. Thanks to some dedicated fans, we've cracked the code: her album titles, aka 19 + 21 + 25 + 30, = 95.
Watch Adele's full interview here to see her Al Pacino impression and hear about her top three Beyoncé albums, her 2012 Armani moment at the Grammys, and her "prized possession", aka a framed piece of gum chewed by Celine Dion and gifted to her by James Corden.