Remedy

Having teamed up successfully with Ryan Tedder for the 21 tracks "Rumour Has It" and "Turning Tables," Adele flew to New York in 2013 to reunite with the OneRepublic frontman and songwriter. Tedder had the word "remedy," some piano motifs and the idea that the song might be about someone beloved before meeting up with Adele. "She immediately said, 'This is about my kid,'" Tedder recalled to The New York Times. "That unlocked the whole lyric. And it was done, written and recorded that day."

The maternal ballad about Adele's son was the first song written for her 25 album. Adele loved the track and thought she was on a roll writing about being a mother, but it turned out to be a false dawn. "I started knocking out some s--t songs - they weren't s--t," she told i-D correcting herself, "they were good pop songs, but I was just trying to bang it out, I didn't want to think about it. And, you know, it got rejected. My manager was like, 'This isn't good enough.'" "It knocked my confidence a bit, but I also knew, you know. And then I flew Rick Rubin over, to play him the songs and he was like, 'I don't believe you.' That's my worst fear: people not believing me." So Adele went back to the drawing board and began writing about her transition into adulthood, and the tunes began pouring out of her.

Ryan Tedder accidentally teased the song on Instagram four months before the album's release. He posted a picture of a Pro Tools session with the caption "Adele NYC remedy" before quickly deleting it.