All I Ask

This piano ballad was written by Adele with Bruno Mars along with his Smeezingtons production colleagues Philip Lawrence and Ari Levine. The English singer told i-D: "I've never sung so hard in me whole life. Can you imagine the fun me and Bruno had making that?"

Many of the 25 tracks are love songs. Adele described them to Zane Lowe as focusing on "overcoming obstacles in relationships." She added, "And that's actually the best feeling in the world. I've never really had that. I'm also super fascinated by going from loving someone so much to hating them. That's what 'All I Ask' is."

Adele told The New York Times the story of this emotional, piano-driven song. "It's, 'Let's not go out on a bad note,'" she explained. "That's not about my relationship now. It's not about any specific relationships that I've had. I wrote that with Bruno Mars, and we were, like, 'Let's just [expletive] go for it.' We're both a bit [expletive] soppy, let's just [expletive] write the soppiest ballad that we could possibly write together. And it's a lovely song." "And I think that line - 'It matters how it ends' - is obviously for me and all of my friends," Adele continued. "That's what we always say when something's about to happen. It matters how this ends, how we get out of this one - whether it be a relationship, a night out, watching a film, whatever. It matters how everything ends because that's how you remember it."