Did you know that British artist and music icon Adele is set to star in a historical drama film?
As per the BBC, this fall, you will get to see her debut in Cry to Heaven, directed by Tom Ford, and based on Anne Rice’s 1982 novel. Set in 18th-century Italy, the story follows the tragic world of young opera singers, a world of identity, sacrifice, and the pursuit of artistic freedom. It is a fitting choice for someone like Adele, whose entire career has been built on those exact themes.
But this isn’t the first time the London-born star has re-invented herself. At every stage of her life and career she has found ways to move forward, producing art that reflects momentum and change rather than stagnation.
Getting The Ball Rolling
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins grew up in a working-class household in Tottenham, North London, raised by her mother after her father left the family when she was just two years old. There were no industry connections, no silver spoon, only a voice, and the music that poured out of her from an early age.
She attended the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology, the same institution that shaped Amy Winehouse and Jessie J, and it was there that she began to discover the shape of her talent. Music was not just a hobby, it was the language through which she made sense of the world. By the time she was 19, her debut album, named precisely that, 19, had announced her as something exceptional: a young soul singer whose emotional honesty felt entirely out of step with the polished pop landscape around her.
Here is the first lesson for you: starting with what you have, rather than waiting for what you wish you had, is always the right move. Adele didn’t wait for a perfect platform. She simply began, turning personal experience into music that connected immediately with millions.
Maintaining Momentum
What makes Adele’s story so instructive is the architecture of her discography. Each of her four studio albums corresponds to her age when she began writing it, 19, 21, 25, 30, and each one captures a completely different woman. Rather than coasting on the momentum of what came before, she started over each time.
21 arrived after a painful breakup and became one of the best-selling albums in history. The momentum it generated was staggering: Grammy Awards, global records broken, a voice that seemed to speak for anyone who had ever loved and lost. It would have been tempting, at that point, to stay exactly where she was. To keep making 21 forever. The music industry certainly would have rewarded her for it.
She didn’t. She stepped away, had her son Angelo, and returned on her own terms.
25 was a softer homecoming, exploring nostalgia and reconciliation. Then came the harder years, a marriage to Simon Konecki, then a divorce that played out in full view of the world. She has spoken openly about her anxiety during this period, about not recognising herself, about the particular devastation of a public failure in the most private corner of your life. Rather than letting that grief stall her momentum, she channelled it.
A Return to Music?
Here is where many people stop. The weight of the world’s gaze, combined with personal grief, is enough to silence most of us, and kill whatever momentum we had built. But Adele turned it into 30.
Released in 2021, 30 is arguably the boldest album of her career. She described it herself as “self-destruction, then self-reflection, and then self-redemption.” Songs like Easy on Me and My Little Love, which included actual voice notes from conversations with her son, revealed a woman choosing radical honesty over polished image.
Think about what that required of her. In an industry that often rewards reinvention through spectacle, the dramatic haircut, the shocking collaboration, the manufactured controversy, Adele chose the quieter and harder route. She let the music carry the weight of the truth. And because of it, the momentum of her career did not just survive the chaos of her personal life. It deepened.
This is the lesson most worth carrying with you: your setbacks do not have to be hidden from your work. The difficult chapters, navigated honestly, can become the most powerful thing you create.
In July 2024, Adele told the world she had no plans for new music, at least not yet. “I want a big break after this,” she said, “and I think I want to do other creative things, just for a little while.”
Most people read that as a retreat. It wasn’t. It was entirely consistent with how she has always operated, using stillness as a precursor to momentum. Every major chapter in her career has followed the same rhythm: step back, go inward, emerge transformed. Each return has been marked by music that felt more evolved, more assured, more deeply felt than anything before it.
And so here we are, with Adele preparing to step in front of a film camera for the first time, in a Tom Ford production, in a story saturated with themes of identity and artistic freedom. The woman who turned heartbreak into music is now turning her creative curiosity outward, into an entirely new medium. Reports have stated that she is even composing a dramatic cinematic ballad for the film, meaning her anticipated return to music is coming. Even her silence, it turns out, she has been building momentum.
What You Can Take From This
You do not need to be a recording artist for any of this to matter to you. What Adele models, across every chapter of her story, is something far more transferable: the willingness to let each phase of your life be genuinely different from the last.
She did not try to repeat 21 when she was 30. She did not cling to the version of herself that the world had already applauded. She kept asking what was true for her now, and she built from that, finding new momentum each time not by chasing the old music, but by trusting what was emerging.
So ask yourself the same question. What is true for you now? Not last year, not the version of you that already earned approval, now.
That is where your next chapter begins. And if Adele has taught us anything, it is that the next chapter is often the best one.
If you want to read more about retaining momentum in life, check out Ronnie O’Sullivan, or Why You Should Start Running.
