One of the first contestants eliminated from “The Debut: Dream Academy,” ADÉLA released her first studio album, “PRIMA,” on September 4. It debuted at No. 4 on the “Billboard” 200 dated September 19, moving 56,000 units in its first week. It was the only brand-new release to land in the Top 50 that week. The single “Ain’t In LA,” released ahead of the album, debuted at No. 85 on the Hot 100 dated August 15, making ADÉLA the first Slovak artist in history to appear on the chart. The song climbed to No. 30 alongside the album’s debut. Another new track, “Nicole Kidman,” landed on the chart at No. 45 the same week. Three years after being the first asked to leave the stage, ADÉLA’s now standing front and center, with her journey forming a big part of her story.
The title “PRIMA” has two meanings. “It stands for ‘first,’ but also because I’m a ballerina,” she told Elton John on Apple Music’s “Rocket Hour.” “You know, the prima ballerina is kind of the best soloist in the company. So hopefully one day I’ll get to be a prima ballerina of pop music.” She started ballet at age three and made her way through the Vienna State Ballet and then the English National Ballet, a résumé that certainly befits her pop-star ambitions.
“PRIMA” is unapologetically ambitious. “I want this album to sound exactly like a 22-year-old girl,” she previously explained. “I tried to express both sides. I mixed the hard with the soft, the vulnerable with the swag of it all, the muscular beats with the feminine energy.” ADÉLA’s credited as a songwriter on every track. What would it look like if you took a classically trained dancer, the artistic excess of FKA twigs, and mixed it together in this post-brat era? “PRIMA” takes that thought experiment and makes it reality. Dylan Brady and Blake Slatkin produced right across the album, with a huge number of heavyweight songwriters like Julia Michaels, Theron Thomas, and the Dare filling out the credits. Brady not only popularized hyperpop through his work in 100 gecs but is often said to have helped bring the genre’s experimental production to the mainstream. Slatkin’s biggest hits include Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” and the Sam Smith and Kim Petras duet “Unholy.”
The first thing ADÉLA did to carve out an opportunity for herself was to make sure nobody forgot about her. Instead of going home after she failed to make the cut at the audition, she stayed in LA and went to community college to take music classes. Right after Netflix released “Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE,” ADÉLA independently released her debut single, “HOMEWRECKED,” which led to a record deal and her 2025 EP “The Provocateur.” As she told “i-D” in an interview back in February, she decided “I’m actually gonna do it myself.” As the interviewer guessed, that wasn’t just a decision about debuting but more of a whole way of life she’d inherited from her mother. Her debut isn’t some underdog story about turning defeat around. She’s finding her way back to her own story.
You can hear that most clearly on “Ain’t In LA.” The music video was shot in ADÉLA’s hometown of Bratislava, where she appears against the backdrop of a panelák, a Slovak apartment block, and dances in front of Hollywood posters alongside kids in traditional Slovak attire. The song had its genesis in a photo ADÉLA found of her then-18-year-old mother standing in front of posters of American pop culture icons. Naturally, those posters were banned in the communist era of what was then Czechoslovakia. “My grandfather smuggled the posters in from Germany,” ADÉLA has revealed. “It made me think, ‘There are so many beautiful girls with dreams who will never get their flowers like my mom.’ I wrote this for her and the billion other bitches who are probably cooler than me.” When she sings “the baddest bitches ain’t in LA” in the chorus, it’s a message for dreamers everywhere: Wherever you’re from, wherever you are, keep chasing your dreams.
What sets “PRIMA” apart is the way it translates ballet for her stage. ADÉLA gives a brief taste of ballet at the start of the music video for “KGB.” After that, in high heels, she strings together moves that hint at ballet but come closer to acrobatics than dance. “The choreo doesn’t take itself too seriously,” she said in an interview with “W” magazine. “It’s campy, wink-wink energy, almost ironic.” It’s no surprise that this unique approach took off as a dance challenge on TikTok. Her knack for turning “serious” art into pop-culture fun echoes how she came from the margins of the pop world and turned it into her defining identity.
An artist from the so-called Eastern Bloc releasing a song called “KGB” seems pretty adventurous. The song uses the former Soviet secret police as a metaphor for training to be a pop star (“I was, like, eight, working the night shift to learn English”). The chorus, meanwhile, zeroes in on the preconceptions American pop culture holds about where she’s from. She rounds out the song with an onscreen statement at the end of the music video: “Growing up in Slovakia, it was impossible to escape the harmful influence of the Soviet Union. ‘KGB’ and its video are not an endorsement of the organization or their actions, but an acknowledgement of where I’m from,” it reads. “I stand with the people of Ukraine.”
No track off the album has received such an instant response since it was released as “Nicole Kidman.” As the title suggests, it’s a tribute to the actress. The music video recreates scenes from Kidman’s films, including “To Die For,” “Eyes Wide Shut,” and “Moulin Rouge!,” and even works in the AMC theater ad she starred in. ADÉLA came to Hollywood from the margins, and she claims it as her own in the same breath. “Nicole Kidman” really represents the final chapter of “Ain’t In LA.” The daughter of a woman who once stood in front of smuggled posters eventually names a song after a Hollywood icon. The response has already outpaced “Ain’t In LA.” After entering the Hot 100 at No. 45, the song jumped to No. 22 the following week. Kidman even used “Ain’t In LA” as the background music for her very first TikTok video. It was as if the banned posters had spoken back.
This story isn’t ADÉLA’s alone. She’s still close with the girls of KATSEYE. In a “Teen Vogue” interview, she brought up KATSEYE’s Lara and Megan, along with EMILY of SAINT SATINE, who’s preparing to debut, and said, “The girls are so busy … I am so busy. So it’s very special when we get together,” adding how they “understand each other very well because we went through something very strange together.” Megan and Lara held up a sign for ADÉLA onstage when KATSEYE was performing live, and when ADÉLA opened for Demi Lovato, Lara, Megan, and EMILY all came out to cheer her on. From the competition of the audition to an unbreakable bond, each of them has found a new path for themselves.
The intensity of “PRIMA” helped it receive an unusual amount of attention considering it’s the singer’s first full-length album. Even people who’d never heard of ADÉLA could easily have stumbled across her on any music app’s home screen, and what made them stick around for the album was the way she wrote her wish to be a pop star into the album without the slightest reservation. In an interview, HYBE x Geffen’s Mitra Darab said, “We see ADÉLA as a solo artist.” Fans talked about that line like it was a prophecy. Right after she was eliminated, ADÉLA told the others, “Everyone here is so talented and I want you to know that none of you need this,” and that eventually turned out to be true. She was always a star—the only question was how it would happen. And now we know.