Songfacts®:

• Adele began writing this ghostly number one night while lying in bed, unable to sleep. She then hooked up with "Rolling In The Deep" producer Paul Epworth to complete the tune.
  
  "It's about intimacy on every level," Adele explained to i-D. "It's about sex, it's about arguing, one of the most intimate moments in my life. 'Cause you just blurt it out. It's a bit like, a drunk tongue is an honest one. That's definitely my motto, in life. That's why I don't really like drinking no more. The panic you get when you wake up the next morning."
• The Observer asked Adele what her partner Simon Konecki makes of the song? "My man is loyal," she replied "My man is strong. So we spoke early on, and he said, 'Your writing isn't anything to do with me.' He's fine with it. And it takes a strong man, I think, to be like that."
• Adele explained the song's meaning to The New York Times: "That's just about the general intimacy of a relationship," she said. "It sounds very sexual, but it's not only sexual. It's about every aspect of intimacy in a relationship. It's just wanting everything! I want the good, the bad, the warts and all. I want the amazing."
• A group of guinea pigs were forced to listen to this song on a loop for four hours at high volume in the interest of science. It was part of a French study to see if compressed music could be harmful to hearing - guinea pigs hear at similar frequencies to humans, and "I Miss You" has a distinct frequency spectrum that when compressed removes the restorative pauses that give our brains room to process the song without getting worn out. One group of the animals heard the regular version of the song; the other got a compressed rendition. The compressed music group suffered lasting damage to the stapedius muscle in the middle ear, but the guinea pigs listening to the uncompressed song did not. This shows that compression, a common effect applied to audio that makes the quiet sounds louder, can indeed be harmful to the ear, which is one reason why fans of Metallica and Smashing Pumpkins are more likely to have trouble hearing you.