Adele has opened up about the backlash she received in response to an Instagram post she shared last year.
The 'Hello' singer posted the image to mark what would have been Notting Hill Carnival — which was canceled for the first time in over 50 years due to the pandemic. She wore a bikini top featuring the Jamaican flag, and her hair was styled in Bantu knots — which some fans deemed to be cultural appropriation.
The 33-year-old singer captioned the picture: "Happy what would be Notting Hill Carnival my beloved London."
However, on social media, the image was met with backlash, with journalist Ernest Owens writing: "If 2020 couldn't get any more bizarre, Adele is giving us Bantu knots and cultural appropriation that nobody asked for. This officially marks all of the top white women in pop as problematic. Hate to see it."
Now, in a new interview with British Vogue, Adele conceded that she understood the controversy.
"I could see comments being like, 'the nerve to not take it down,' which I totally get. But if I take it down, it's me acting like it never happened," she told the publication. "And it did. I totally get why people felt like it was appropriating."
"I had thought, if you don't go dressed to celebrate the Jamaican culture - and in so many ways we're so entwined in that part of London - then it's a little bit like, 'What you coming for, then?' I didn't read the f*****g room," she continued. "I was wearing a hairstyle that is actually to protect Afro hair. Ruined mine, obviously."
During the feature, the famously private songstress also opened up about her 2019 divorce from Simon Konecki, and the impact that it had on their young son, Angelo.
She revealed that her upcoming album was recorded to help her nine-year-old understand why she and Konecki got divorced. "I wanted to explain to him through this record, when he's in his twenties or thirties, who I am and why I voluntarily chose to dismantle his entire life in the pursuit of my own happiness," she said.
"It made him really unhappy sometimes. And that's a real wound for me that I don't know if I'll ever be able to heal," she added.
On Tuesday (October 5), Adele released a sample of her single, 'Easy On Me'. It's due to be released on Friday, October 15.