Easy on Me

Adele wrote Easy on Me with Greg Kurstin, who produced it and plays bass, kick drum and piano. She conceived the verses in the shower. Friends had been telling her to go easy on herself, and the advice stuck. Of three songs in contention for the lead single she chose this one because it had a soaring chorus and felt like a song of hers. She said she did not want another bombastic song like Hello, because that one had pushed her fame to a level she did not want again. Tom Elmhirst mixed it at Electric Lady Studios in New York and Randy Merrill mastered it at Sterling Sound.

The lyrics address her divorce and ask forgiveness from her son, her ex-husband and herself. Alexis Petridis wrote that her voice sounds initially wounded, then soars. Xavier Dolan, who had directed the Hello video, directed this one too, in the same house in Sutton, Quebec, filmed on 15 and 16 September 2021. It begins in black and white before turning to colour.

It was released on 15 October 2021 and became the most streamed song on Spotify in a single day and a single week. It debuted at number one in the UK with 217,300 units and spent eight non-consecutive weeks there, her longest run at the top. On the Billboard Hot 100 it spent ten weeks at number one, matching Hello. It won the 2022 Brit Award for Song of the Year and the 2023 Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance. A duet version with Chris Stapleton went to US country radio on 19 November 2021. It appears in 115 of the 435 logged setlists that list songs.