30

Adele recorded 30 between 2018 and February 2020. Greg Kurstin produced several of the tracks, Ludwig Göransson produced the opener, and Inflo produced Woman Like Me, Hold On and Love Is a Game. The album came from her divorce, her anxiety, and the pressures of motherhood and fame, and took shape as a way to explain to her son why she left his father. My Little Love includes voice notes from her conversations with him. All Night Parking is built on a sample chain that leads back to Erroll Garner's 1964 performance of No More Shadows, and credits Garner as a featured artist. She described the record as self-destruction, then self-reflection and then self-redemption.

It was the best-selling album of 2021 worldwide with 5.54 million copies, worldwide. In the UK it opened with 261,000 copies and spent five weeks at number one. In the United States it had 839,000 units in its first week and spent six weeks at the top. Jill Mapes of Pitchfork called it her most ambitious album to date. It won British Album of the Year at the 2022 Brit Awards, making her the first solo artist to win the award three times.