The Stories Behind the Songs on Adele's 25 Album

Adele‘s album 25 is breaking records all over the place. She dethroned Beyoncé as the artist with the fastest selling album in iTunes history and knocked *NSYNC out of the top spot to become the new record-holder for single-week album sales. Here’s a look at the stories behind some of the songs on this history-making album:

“Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”
Originally titled, “We Ain’t Kids Anymore,” it’s a pop song (Taylor Swift and Britney Spears hitmaker Max Martin produced it) that still delivers an Adele-worthy punch to a former flame. “I was too strong you weren’t trembling/you couldn’t handle the hot heat rising.”

“Remedy”
Written and recorded in one day with Ryan Tedder, the ballad (which is inspired by her son) was a turning point in the making of 25. As she told Rolling Stone: “When I wrote it, I got my confidence back in my writing ’cause I believed in myself.”

“Water Under the Bridge”
The song, inspired by her boyfriend Simon Konecki, is “sort of about a relationship suddenly getting really, really serious and then getting a bit frightened by it,” she told Rolling Stone, “and then realizing that ‘I think this must be right. This is the relationship that I want to be in for as long as I can possibly be in it.’ ”

For more on Adele, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now.

“Million Years Ago”
“I miss the air, I miss my friends/I miss my mother, I miss it when/Life was a party to be thrown/But that was a million years ago,” she sings on the nostalgic, last-minute addition she wrote after driving by a park she and her friends hung out in growing up.

“Sweetest Devotion”
A snippet of her son’s voice pops up on this ender. “The song is all about my kid,” she told USA Today. From mother to child she sings: “There is something about the way you love me/That finally feels like home.”