Songfacts®:

• Adele recorded this self-lacerating '70s-style soul song for her album 30. Her inspiration for making the record was an attempt to answer questions from her son about her amicable divorce from his father. Speaking directly to Angelo, who was six when his parents split, she admits to being a flawed woman who feels guilty about making him sad.
• Adele's feelings consumed her following the breakdown of her marriage. Though she was present in body for her son, she wasn't in spirit, and Angelo told his mother she'd become a ghost. Adele wrote "My Little Love" the day after Angelo said he couldn't see her. "He said to my face, Can you see me? And I was like, Uh, yeah," she told Vogue. "And he was like, Cause I can't see you. Well, my whole life fell apart in that moment. He knew I wasn't there."
• Adele opens up to her son about feeling confused and heartbroken after breaking up with his father. She felt comfortable documenting her struggles in "My Little Love," as it may help others. "While I was writing it, I just remember thinking of any child that's been through divorce or any person that has been through a divorce themselves, or anyone that wants to leave a relationship and never will," she told Apple. "I thought about all of them, because my divorce really humanized my parents for me."
• In between the verses, Adele inserts heartbreaking recorded conversations where she attempts to explain her feelings in the wake of her marriage breakdown. The idea to incorporate voice notes came after listening to albums by the California rapper Tyler, the Creator and the British rapper Skepta.
• The song ends with a voicemail that a stressed and paranoid Adele left on a friend's phone. "I was really frightened," she told the Australian radio show Carrie & Tommy. "I was having an anxiety attack and I called my best friend to try to talk to her to calm me down but she didn't bloody answer. It shines some light on... I'm talking about my son in the rest of the song, and once I put him to bed I can stop putting on that brave face."
• Adele wrote the song with its producer, Greg Kurstin, who integrated strings, contemporary beats and elements of Golden Age jazz to the song's '70s groove. Kurstin produced six tracks on 30, including the lead single, "Easy On Me."
• Kurstin also played all the instruments apart from the strings, which were performed by the Canadian composer David Campbell.