After a slow drip-feed of information – the name of her new single, an unprecedented two simultaneous covers of Vogue in the US and the UK – Adele has officially confirmed the release date of her fourth album.

30 will arrive on 19 November – as fans had guessed when Taylor Swift pulled her latest release forward a week from 19 November to 12 November, presumably to avoid a clash with another pop titan.

In a statement accompanying the announcement, Adele said: “I was nowhere near where I’d hoped to be when I first started [30] nearly three years ago. Quite the opposite actually. I rely on routine and consistency to feel safe, I always have. And yet there I was knowingly – willingly even – throwing myself into a maze of absolute mess and inner turmoil.”

— Columbia Records (@ColumbiaRecords) October 13, 2021
Adele and her ex-husband, charity CEO Simon Konecki, divorced in 2019. Speaking to Vogue, Adele intimated that they had been separated long prior to the split becoming public. The former couple have a nine-year-old son.

Now 33 years old, Adele wrote that she had “learned a lot of blistering home truths” about herself in the past three years. “I feel like I’ve finally found my feeling again. I’d go as far as to say that I’ve never felt more peaceful in my life. And so, I’m ready to finally put this album out.”

30 is preceded by the single Easy on Me, due for release this Friday. A brief clip of the song teased online suggested a return to Adele’s trademark balladry – but it remains to be seen whether that is a red herring.

She likened the album to the type of friend who appears during trying times with bottles of wine, good advice, comfort, impromptu trips out and surprise gifts of magazines and face masks – “to make me feel loved while inadvertently reminding me not only what month it actually was, but that I should probably exercise some self-care!”

She wrote that she had “painstakingly rebuilt my house and my heart since then and this album narrates it”.

In August 2020, Adele credited self-help author Glennon Doyle’s book Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living with transforming her life. “I am so ready for myself after reading this book!” she wrote on Instagram. “It’s as if I just flew into my body for the very first time.” Speaking to Vogue, she explained that exercise had helped her through the profound anxiety that she had experienced in recent years.

30 will be Adele’s first album solely for Columbia Records. Her earlier albums were released in partnership between Columbia and UK independent label XL Recordings.