The pop singer Adele wrote the Grammy-award winning “Someone Like You” and the rest of her smash-hit album 21 in response to the end of a “rubbish relationship.” When she fell in love again and got pregnant, she offered a satisfying resolution to her woe. One of my daughter’s friends, at age nine, proclaimed exuberantly: “Adele has a new boyfriend and she’s going to have a baby and she’ll never be sad again!” (Her mother sagely warned her that life has no such guarantees.) There was one immediate drawback to Adele’s happy ending: less of her music. Adele announced that she would need to take a
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