There has been a rush to define the remaining months of 2021. It will be a winter of discontent, of supply chain disruption and potential blackouts; a post-lockdown return to dressing up and going out.

It will also, undoubtedly, be the season of Adele.

This week, the biggest-selling female albums artist of the 21st century announced her return, six years after her last album. A new single, Easy on Me, is set for release on 15 October. Her fourth album, 30, is rumoured for mid-November.

She heralded her new era with an unprecedented two simultaneous Vogue covers, sitting for separate interviews and photoshoots for the magazine’s US and UK editions.

She talked frankly about her divorce from the charity chief executive Simon Konecki, with whom she has a nine-year-old son. She was the one to leave, she told British Vogue. “I didn’t want to end up like a lot of other people I knew. I wasn’t miserable miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first.” She talked of the anguish that the split had caused their son, Angelo, and she wrote her new album in part to help him understand his parents’ situation.

She also spoke of the profound anxiety that prompted her much-discussed weight loss. “Working out, I would just feel better,” she said. “It was never about losing weight, it was always about becoming strong and giving myself as much time every day without my phone.”

She said she resented the discussion around her changed physical appearance, particularly the intimation that it was a post-divorce “revenge body”. “People love to portray a divorced woman as spinning out of control, like, ‘Oh she must be crackers. She must’ve decided she wants to be a ho.’ Because what is a woman without a husband? It’s bullshit.”

She told US Vogue: “I understand why it’s a shock. I understand why some women especially were hurt. Visually I represented a lot of women. But I’m still the same person.”