Adele recorded the song for her debut album 19 at her manager’s suggestion, and it was released as a single on 27 October 2008. It initially reached No. 26 in the UK; after it was performed on The X Factor in 2010 it re-entered and climbed to No. 4, going on to multi-platinum certification. Her reading — voice and piano, almost nothing else — is the definitive one for most listeners, which is exactly why the chronology gets lost. Nothing about the record is wrong; only the assumption that it came first.