'Emotionally brilliant': singer Adele releases new album '30'

Music star Adele released her first album in six years on Friday, winning over critics and fans alike with the record she said she made to explain her divorce to her young son.

The hotly-anticipated "30" is the fourth studio album by the Briton, whose chart-topping ballads about break-ups, regrets and nostalgia have made her one of the most successful singer-songwriters of all time.

In their reviews, critics praised Adele's honesty on the album, which she has described as "sensitive" and where the notoriously private singer opens up with touching voice notes recorded with her son Angelo, 9.

"She's never sounded more ferocious than she does on '30' - more alive to her own feelings, more virtuosic at shaping them into songs in the key of her own damn life," Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield said in his five-star review, adding the album was Adele's best so far.

"30" follows the Grammy Award winning "25" and, like her previous albums, is named after a milestone age in the "Someone Like You" and "Hello" singer's life. Adele announced her split from her husband Simon Konecki in 2019.