Adele Shut Down Requests To Make Music For TikTok After Her Team Said They Wanted To "Make Sure These 14-Year-Olds Know" Who She Is

"If everyone's making music for the TikTok, who's making music for my generation? Who's making the music for my peers? I will do that job, gladly."

By
Ben Henry
by Ben Henry

BuzzFeed Staff

Adele is back.

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The singer dropped her much-anticipated album 30 on Friday to rave reviews from critics and fans alike, with many already applauding it as her best work to date.

Simon Emmett

It was already widely known that the album would cover a multitude of personal things to the star, including the breakdown of her marriage (or, as Adele herself put it in an Instagram Live, "Divorce, babe, divorce") and the subsequent journey to finding herself amidst the heartbreak.

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Revealing that she'd actually filed for divorce in 2019 and that nobody knew at the time, she told Vogue in an interview last month: "Neither of us did anything wrong. Neither of us hurt each other or anything like that. It was just: I want my son to see me really love, and be loved. It's really important to me." 

She added, "I've been on my journey to find my true happiness ever since."

The 12 songs that make up the album are arguably the most varied compared to her previous albums, and with a No. 1, record-smashing hit under her belt already, she's once again proved that she doesn't need to — nor has she ever had to — follow the trends to see success.

Simon Emmett

It's premature considering the album was only just released today, but it's almost certain that 30 will see huge first-week sales and the kind of numbers that very few artists, if any, are currently able to compete with.

Speaking in a recent interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, Adele revealed that she shut down conversation of making music geared toward TikTok, explaining that it wasn't the audience she was aiming her music at in the first place.

Apple Music / Via youtube.com

"As we were wrapping it up with the mixing and all that, the conversation of TikTok came up a lot," she said. "So I'm like, Tik-a-Tok-a-Who? They're like, We’ve really gotta make sure that these 14-year-olds know who you are. I'm like, But they've all got moms. They've all got moms and they've definitely been growing up listening to my music, these 14-year-olds and stuff like that."

"If everyone's making music for the TikTok, who's making music for my generation?" Adele went on. "Who's making the music for my peers? I will do that job, gladly."

Apple Music / Via youtube.com

She added: "I'd rather cater to people that are on my level in terms of the amount of time we’ve spent on Earth and all the things we’ve been through."

In fact, Adele went as far as to say that she thought the themes on her album were "a bit too deep" for younger audiences anyway, and that she'd rather cater to the people who are on a similar path to her.

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"I don't want 12-year-olds listening to this record — it's a bit too deep," she said. "But the 30- and 40-year-olds who are all committing to themselves and doing therapy, that's my vibe, 'cause that's what I was doing. So I'm more concerned with how this record can help them."


In a similar vein, Adele responded to criticism that her music sounds the same in another recent interview, pointing out that she stands in a lane of her own that avoids any confusion.

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"I really enjoy the music that I write. If I didn't, then I wouldn't be doing it," she said in an interview with the Face. "When I'm consistent with the sound of my music and the style of singing that I do, I think that's what — I believe — cuts through everything else. Because it's not confusing. No one's like: ​What?"

"Why would I shake up my sound?" she went on, revealing she'd seen some comments about first single "Easy On Me" after she released a snippet of the song. "No one else is doing my sound, so why would I change it up?"

You can watch Adele's full interview with Zane Lowe here.

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