Award-winning singer Adele has admitted she "wanted to give up" while making her new album.
Appearing on BBC Radio 1 with Nick Grimshaw, the singer gave a frank interview about making her much-anticipated third album, 25.
"I felt like this was never going to happen," she said, "I felt like I was never going to finish this record. It was a long process, and I wanted to give up a lot because I couldn't do it. I thought I'd run out of ideas and lost my ability to write a song."
She also described fame as "quite frightening" and "really toxic".
"Fame is not real and I don't want to live a fake life. I'm just not interested in that," she told Grimshaw.
"It (fame) doesn't last, so why get involved in something that you will miss when it goes. I like the way that I've lived my life always and that's why I'll carry on living it like that. No one else in my life is famous so they'd think I'm being an idiot if I was ever to try and get carried away with myself."
The singer sent fans into a frenzy when she posted about her album on her Instagram account earlier in the week.
The simple post read: "25 out November 20th", and was accompanied by a black and white headshot of her.
She debuted the album's first single, Hello, on Grimshaw's show, with the cinematic video for the song also being released shortly.
"My hips just started hurting because I'm getting so nervous," she told Grimshaw before he played it.
When asked if the song needed an emotional warning, she replied: "It doesn't need an emotional warning, it's a very intimate song and very conversational. I'm singing quite high up in the chorus, I'm trying to have a Meat Loaf moment.
"I want people to like it, I really like it and when I wrote it, I knew this would be the first thing everyone heard from me."
Following the song's debut on the radio show, fans praised her on social media.
One fan tweeted: "She's back and amazing!" and another said "How is it possible for one human to be so talented? It's not normal."
The first lyric of the song is "Hello" and the star referenced Lionel Richie's famous lines from his song of the same name, saying: "Me and Lionel, we definitely have got to do something. Lionel, I'm putting it out there."
She said she felt relieved after the song had aired.
"I've been sitting on it for ages," she said. "I felt like a lot of stuff in my life has changed and not at all because of my career, because stuff changes. And I found myself yearning for my past for no reason other than that it had gone.
"I missed elements of it, it's not about an ex-relationship, it's about my relationship with everyone that I love, it's not that we have fallen out, we've all got our lives going on and I needed to write that song so they would all hear it, because I'm not in touch with them."
She gave fans an insight into the album via Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday, three days after she had teased a snippet from a song during an ad break on ITV's The X Factor.
Her message said: "My last record was a break-up record and if I had to label this one I would call it a make-up record. I'm making up with myself.
"Making up for lost time. Making up for everything I ever did and never did. But I haven't got time to hold on to the crumbs of my past like I used to. What's done is done."
Reflecting, she said she used to wish her years away.
"When I turned 12 I just wanted to be 18. Then after that I stopped wanting to be older," she wrote.
"Now I'm ticking 16-24 boxes just to see if I can blag it. I feel like I've spent my whole life so far wishing it away. Always wishing I was older, wishing I was somewhere else. Wishing I hadn't ruined so many good things because I was scared or bored."
She became a mother in October 2012, when she gave birth to son Angelo with boyfriend Simon Konecki.