Woman Like Me

Album: 30 (2021)
Charted: 55
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Songfacts®:

  • This kiss-off song finds a furious Adele lashing out at her man for being complacent, lazy, and a complainer. She recognizes his insecurities originate from being hurt in previous relationships and pleads he lets her help him. But because her lover is unwilling to move on from his character flaws, the singer is over him.
  • Who is the lover Adele is addressing? There are two possibilities:

    1. Simon Konecki, Adele's ex-husband and the father of her child. Their divorce inspired the 30 album, and the singer tackles their separation on several of their tracks. However, their divorce was amicable and they remain on good terms, so would she write such a cutting song about him? "He knows what kind of artist I am, that I have to dig deep and tell my stories," Adele told Oprah Winfrey.

    2. An unnamed boyfriend. On the track "All Night Parking," which precedes this song, Adele recounts her first post-divorce romance. Their relationship didn't work out and the sequencing of the two song is likely significant. (Adele has spoken of the importance of listening to the tracks in order).
  • According to Adele, she mainly directed the words of the song at somebody other than Konecki, but some of what she's talking about are things she learned during their courtship and marriage. "Even though I'm directing all the things I'm saying at someone else, they're also things I've learned on this journey," she explained to Rolling Stone. "The storyline of what I'm saying, I wouldn't have been able to write before because it was something that I was experiencing myself."
  • Adele wrote the song with British producer Inflo (Little Simz, Michael Kiwanuka). Inflo is also a member of the UK collective Sault, and his edgy acoustic guitar-led production recalls their work.

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