The full title—and the actual release history
The subject commonly shortened to “Adele Send My Love” is “Send My Love (To Your New Lover),” the brisk third single from 25. Adele wrote it with Swedish pop architects Max Martin and Shellback, whose legal name is Karl Johan Schuster; Martin and Shellback produced the recording. It first appeared when XL Recordings released 25 on November 20, 2015, then received a distinct single campaign on May 16, 2016.
That two-stage chronology resolves two common confusions. First, November 20 is the track’s initial commercial availability, while May 16 marks its promotion as a single. Second, online “extended snippets” from November 2015 were not official alternate versions. Three days before the album arrived, The Guardian reported that snippets said to be from 25 had circulated; contemporary reports traced some longer previews to a retailer’s premature listing. They should be described as leaked or accidentally exposed excerpts, not authorized Adele releases.
May 16, 2016 is the most defining date for this particular song because Adele’s team announced the single, placed it on major digital services and revealed the coming video premiere. TIME’s announcement coverage documented all three steps.
A teenage riff meets Swedish pop engineering
The song’s origin predates 25 by many years. Adele told NPR that she had brought a guitar riff into her meeting with Martin and that the composition came together quickly. Her 2015 conversation with NPR also explained the unlikely route to that collaboration: while lunching with Ryan Tedder, she heard Taylor Swift’s Martin-and-Shellback production “I Knew You Were Trouble,” asked who had made it, and pursued an introduction.
Adele’s lack of interest in producer mythology is part of the story’s charm, but the session was not merely a superstar hiring hitmakers. She arrived with old musical material. Martin and Shellback helped reorganize it into a compact pop record whose clipped guitar, programmed rhythm and layered backing vocals differ sharply from the stately ballads most associated with her.
The released credits identify Adele, Martin and Shellback as writers. Martin and Shellback are producers; Shellback is also credited for programming and studio performance, while Adele contributes guitar and backing vocals in addition to her lead. Michael Ilbert handled engineering, Serban Ghenea mixed the track with John Hanes, and Tom Coyne and Randy Merrill are associated with mastering. The officially supplied YouTube audio metadata confirms the writers, producers and principal technical personnel under XL’s 2015 copyright.
A breakup song that refuses to mourn
On 25, “Send My Love” arrives directly after “Hello,” making its dry guitar entrance feel like a door thrown open. Adele is still addressing a former partner, but the emotional posture has changed. She neither begs for reunion nor fantasizes about revenge. The title’s ostensible generosity carries an unmistakable edge: her blessing releases the ex while demonstrating that she has already moved beyond him.
Adele has characterized it as a glad-to-be-rid-of-you song. That tone matters because the track’s language includes both accusation and absolution. The narrator identifies broken promises, yet the chorus converts grievance into movement. The light rhythm keeps the song from sinking into the history it recounts.
Musically, Martin and Shellback resist overloading Adele’s voice. The verses use negative space, hand-percussion-like accents and a recurring acoustic figure. Her stacked responses become part of the groove, not a conventional choir. The arrangement’s springy, syncopated feel was described in pre-release coverage as calypso-flavored, though that label should be understood as a critic’s shorthand, not a formal genre designation. TIME’s account of Adele’s first major 25 interview recorded both the comparison and the story of her discovering Martin’s work.
The performance is controlled rather than volcanic. Adele clips phrases, uses conversational consonants and lets the hook’s repeated syllables supply momentum. Her restraint is the point: the singer no longer needs the enormous cathartic peak of “Someone Like You” to prove the relationship mattered.
The Patrick Daughters video
The official video premiered during the Billboard Music Awards on May 22, 2016. Patrick Daughters directed it in London, placing Adele in a floral Dolce & Gabbana gown against a black background. Official Charts’ premiere report identified Daughters and the London shoot, while TIME reported the awards-show premiere.
Its apparent simplicity becomes its central visual mechanism. Multiple exposures of Adele accumulate, overlap and move out of synchronization. There is no literal former lover, no new partner and no narrative breakup scene. The image instead divides Adele into successive selves.
That reading is interpretive, but the visual evidence is plain: layered takes gradually crowd the frame before resolving. The technique mirrors the record’s stacked vocals and turns emotional release into multiplication. Rather than illustrate the lyrics, Daughters makes memory visible as several versions of one person occupying the same dark space.
The video was unquestionably official, unlike the pre-album snippets. It came from the artist’s campaign, premiered through a licensed broadcast event and was covered as her new single video by publications including NME.
From album cut to international hit
“Send My Love” was a commercial exception within Adele’s catalogue: an uptempo radio record that still sounded recognizably hers. The Official Charts Company’s song archive records its UK run, where it reached the Top 10. It also became a major US radio success and a Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 hit, extending the 25 campaign beyond the immense opening impact of “Hello” and “When We Were Young.”
Its chart ascent occurred months after listeners could buy the album. That lag was normal for a formally promoted single, but 25’s unusual distribution strategy sharpened the contrast: the album was initially withheld from on-demand streaming, whereas the May single rollout put “Send My Love” onto major digital services. The campaign transformed an already familiar album track into a current radio and video release.
The single also broadened the public idea of Adele without proposing a wholesale reinvention. Max Martin’s melodic economy and Shellback’s rhythmic precision are audible, yet the lyric’s bluntness, the guitar-source origin and the vocal command keep Adele at the center. It is collaboration rather than disguise.
Why the song endures
The verified story is cleaner than the web residue around it. A riff Adele had carried since adolescence became a co-write with Martin and Shellback; the finished track was released on 25 in November 2015; premature snippets circulated before the album; and a fully authorized single and video campaign began on May 16, 2016, with the video premiering six days later.
Its lasting appeal comes from a reversal of Adele’s most famous dramatic role. Here she is not the abandoned figure preserving a relationship in song. She is the person leaving, and she does so without pretending the past was harmless. The farewell is generous enough for pop radio, cutting enough to remain believable and rhythmically buoyant enough to sound like freedom.
“Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” did not prove that Adele could become a Swedish-pop vehicle. It proved something more specific: her songwriting voice could survive radical changes in tempo, texture and emotional posture. The result is one of her clearest goodbyes—and one of the rare breakup hits that sounds happier each time it closes the door.