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After 21 Adele considered quitting music. In early 2012 she said she needed to take time and live a little, and after her son was born in October 2012 she said he inspired her to record again so he would know what she does. She decided not to make another 21 or another heartbreak record. Early sessions failed. Time with Kid Harpoon was unproductive, the sessions with Ryan Tedder were mostly unfruitful although Remedy survived, and Rick Rubin heard the material and told her to go back to the drawing board. The turn came with Greg Kurstin. She said it all poured right out of her, and they wrote Hello together. She spent two months in Los Angeles, writing When We Were Young with Tobias Jesso Jr. at a rented house with Philip Glass's piano, and All I Ask with Bruno Mars. She wrote Send My Love (To Your New Lover) with Max Martin after Ryan Tedder showed her Martin's work on Taylor Swift's I Knew You Were Trouble. Million Years Ago was added three days before the album was mixed at Electric Lady Studios in New York.

She described it as a make-up record: making up with herself, and making up for lost time. Her references included Madonna's Ray of Light and Moby's Play. In the UK it sold 800,307 copies in its first week, the fastest-selling album in UK chart history at that point, and in the United States 3.38 million, the first album to pass three million in a week. It was the world's best-selling album of 2015 with 17.4 million copies and has sold more than 22 million. She held it back from Spotify and Apple Music until 24 June 2016.

Pitchfork's Amanda Petrusich called her the greatest vocalist of her generation. Alexis Petridis of the Guardian wrote that it sticks close to the formula of 21 and missed the raw emotional edge of that record. It won the 2016 Brit Award for British Album of the Year, and at the 59th Grammys in February 2017 it took Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album, with Kurstin winning Producer of the Year. She became the first artist to win the Album, Record and Song of the Year Grammys twice.