Someone Like You

Adele has said she wrote the first ideas for Someone Like You sitting on the end of her bed with a cold, waiting for her bath to run, after learning that the man she had expected to marry was engaged to someone else. They had been together for eighteen months. Much of her album 21 was angry about him, and by her account she wrote this one because she was worn out from painting him so harshly in songs like Rolling in the Deep. He was still, she said, the most important person in her life. It was one of the last songs written for the album. She took her rough ideas to the American songwriter Dan Wilson, and the two worked it out at a piano. They kept it almost bare: Wilson's piano and her voice, recorded at Harmony Studios in West Hollywood as soon as the song was finished. Wilson said later that they deliberately made it as personal as possible rather than something that could apply to anybody. The single came out on 24 January 2011, the same day as 21. Its turning point was a performance at that year's BRIT Awards, after which it became Adele's first UK number one, held the top spot for five weeks and finished as the year's best-selling single. It went on to win the first Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance and was the most popular karaoke choice in Britain in 2011 and 2012. A song she did not expect anyone else to relate to became the one millions of people reach for after a breakup.