FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: ADÉLA

FEATURE:

Spotlight: Revisited

ADÉLA

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THIS is a modern Pop icon…

who I don’t think gets as much credit as she should. In terms of her talent and consistency, there are few artists as good as ADÉLA. I spotlighted her last year, but a lot has happened since then, so I wanted to revisit ADÉLA. This incredible Slovak singer-songwriter releases her debut album, Prima, on 4th September. I want to include some recent interviews with an artist who I have followed and admired for a long time now. There are four interviews from this year that I want to highlight. ADÉLA wants to create a perfect Pop album. With Prima, there is every chance that she might, given her track record (pun intended). Before coming to the first interview, you can see where she is on tour. ADÉLA plays Reading & Leeds Festival on 28th and 29th August. She plays HERE at Outernet in London 25th August. Go and pre-order Prima, as it is going to be one of the biggest albums of this year. Harper’s Bazaar note how ADÉLA “has studied Beyoncé, Rihanna, Miley, and more”. Now, she is ready to release her debut L.P. I am not going to quote this interview, though I would urge people to read it. I am starting out with this interview, as it is a bit more of a general. In terms of asking about her lifestyle, fashion and things beyond. However, there are some questions and answers I wanted to highlight:

“What's your song of the summer?
"My song of the summer right now is 'What's Wrong With Me' by Olivia Rodrigo and Robert Smith. That song is fucking awesome. That whole album is awesome."

What musical artist inspires you the most?
"I would say Beyoncé for sure. I'm a big Beyhive. I just think she's so smart and she's so hardworking and talented obviously, but the work ethic is unmatched and she's a legend. If you don't respect her and study her, then I don't know what you're doing. It's kind of crazy to me."

How would you describe the genre of music you make?

"I make pop music. I always say that and then people like, 'What kind of pop?' And I'm like, 'Well, I only have seven songs out.' So those are electronic pop. With this new album, I kind of was trying to make music that I loved listening to when I was around 12 years old. I was born in 2003, so music from 2014 and 2015. I hope this album kind of sounds like."

Can you describe your perfect day?

"Wake up at 9:00 AM is perfect. It's perfect amount of sleeping in. And then get breakfast with someone's company that I enjoy and then get coffee, go to the studio, make a song that I'm really excited about—hopefully it's an easy process and the idea just comes and we're all really excited. And then maybe go dance in a studio alone in my heels and then maybe have dinner with some friends and then go to sleep next to someone that I love."

What do you want to be remembered for?
"I want to be remembered for being outspoken and for inspiring people. I want to be remembered for my art".

I did want to get a bit more specific and bring in this i-D article for this spring 2026 edition. A great conversation with an internationally-respected artist who I feel is going to get so much love when her debut album comes out. Whilst we talk about the queens of modern Pop and certain names come up, ADÉLA does not get mentioned in the same breath as she should. That will soon change:

“Her name is Adéla: a sherbet-haired, lethally determined 22-year-old who makes the kind of songs most pop girls would kill for. Over the past year, she’s gone from being a big dreamer from a city most people couldn’t place on a map, to becoming a peer of many global artists she stanned as a kid, co-signed by SZA and Grimes. Even she knows how weird her trajectory has been, so meeting her on home turf feels like watching a creature of the future walk back into her past. Everything here in Bratislava has stayed still since she left it behind.

“I’ve always kind of felt weird here,” Adéla says, her dagger-nailed fingers wrapped around an almond milk latte. Her mum, a well-composed woman, sits opposite us in a downtown brunch spot, scrolling on her phone. The pop star has two phones stacked on top of one another: One serves its traditional purpose; the other is an iPhone 7, just for taking photos. (Y2K is out, Millennial is in, we agree.) Adéla almost never comes home—partly because the journey is long and tricky, partly because there’s not much for her here. She likes hanging out with her friends from school who are finishing their master’s degrees and opening Pilates studios. Other than that, she stresses, “I am objectively out of place. I think a good chunk of my life has been spent in dance studios and singing lessons. But I wasn’t really out in these streets.”

Performing has been in her since she was a kid. When she was just 3 years old, she started ballet lessons, training in Bratislava and Moscow until she moved to London to pursue dance full-time at age 15. It was there she met a young gay dancer named Luca Deller, who believed in her wholeheartedly when she said she wanted to try out the pop thing. “From the very first moment I met her, I knew she was bound to be a star,” Deller tells me. “It was just a matter of time. She wanted it so badly, she’d train six days a week at ballet school and still find time for singing lessons. By that point, she’d told me she wasn’t interested in being a ballet dancer.” So Adéla heeded her friend’s advice, threw in the towel, moved home, and decided to really become a musician.

Her journey to the limelight really took off on The Debut: Dream Academy, the 2023 YouTube reality series that saw hopefuls compete to be part of the global girl group Katseye. (2024’s Pop Star Academy, a Netflix show that chronicled all the girls’ backstories—including Adéla’s—would further popularise the stars of The Debut.) She submitted an audition tape from her bedroom in Bratislava and was accepted, making it down to the final 20 contestants out of hundreds of thousands of applicants. When Adéla left Slovakia for the show, guys she went to high school with teased her. “They were like, ‘What are you gonna do? OnlyFans?’ They thought they were eating—because so what if I did?” she says. She was just 18 years old when, after the first round, she was eliminated by a fan vote. “We see Adéla as a solo artist,” one of the show’s executives said at the time.

Women who want something openly are susceptible to being taken advantage of,” Adéla says of the EP’s thematic origins. “But [nowadays] I feel like I have the chance to be like, ‘Okay, well, fuck you. I’m actually gonna do it myself.’” Did she inherit that attitude? I signal to her mother, still sat scrolling. Adéla grins, then nods: “She’s the baddest bitch! I respect a blunt bitch, because we don’t have time for bullshit. We’re both Eastern European.”

She will soon support Demi Lovato’s arena tour, while envisioning her next chapter, sonically and aesthetically. “I want it to feel really feminine and vulnerable—but also hard,” Adéla says. Maybe she will shave her head, or change her hair colour from pink to green, or turquoise, or blonde. We laugh at the fact that this is something she’ll inevitably have to have a label meeting about: the autonomy of a proud, “fuck you” pop star always tested by the opinions of others. If they know what’s good for them, they should fall into line. “I don’t ever look back and regret anything,” Adéla says. It’s served her well so far. “I trust my gut all the time”.

Last month, CLASH made ADÉLA the third face of their CLASH 134. You can learn more here. I am going to end with NYLON from the start of the year. To sort of see how far she has come in a short time since then. The confidence in her ability is impressive. She has the talent to back it up. Someone who wants to go down in history:

“Though Adéla set her sights on pop stardom early, she wasn’t sure how to get there. She tried ballet, which seemed to her like the only viable path to an entertainment career in Slovakia. But at 16, fed up with the discipline’s creative militarism, Adéla walked away and, at her parents’ urging, gave college a try. (She studied marketing, like “every artistically inclined person that needs to have a job,” she says with an eyeroll.) Then, in 2021, she read Olivia Rodrigo’s Elle cover story, which featured Rodrigo’s long-time vocal coach, Jennifer Dustman, as a secondary source. On a whim, Adéla tracked down Dustman’s contact information to begin working with her remotely. It was Dustman who sent her the open audition call for the talent competition series The Debut: Dream Academy.

Among the 120,000 young women who applied, Adéla was one of the 20 girls selected from around the world to train for nearly two years, K-pop style, and compete for a spot in the girl group that later became KATSEYE. Adéla was an early eliminee, but there are no hard feelings; she’s still close with the group, especially’s Lara Raj and Megan Skiendiel, and she is level-headed about the perks that come with being a solo artist.

“When I do hear about what they’re doing with everything that comes with it, there’s six individuals that are in the group, you don’t always get your way, and you don’t always get your vision, and there are obviously more compromises,” she says. “Where I just get to be completely me, and it’s going to take me longer to find success that way. So it’s almost like you win some, you lose some.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Chloe Horseman

The saying goes that it takes 10 years to become an overnight success, and lately, that’s felt truer than ever — just look at another big three in pop: Charli, Chappell, Sabrina. Adéla, however, might not have to wait. Her debut EP, The Provocateur — the cover of which features Adéla urinating against a wall — is a hyperpop fever dream, with transcendent tracks like “SexOnTheBeat” and “Superscar” showcasing a knack for scrappy yet dazzling pop spectacle. She followed its release with The Provocatour in London, New York, and Los Angeles, garnering rave reviews for her outstanding vocal performance delivered while en pointe. Demi’s not the only star who noticed her gifts, either: Grimes co-wrote and co-produced Adéla’s 2025 single “MachineGirl” (and later appeared in the song’s music video); Christina Aguilera made a cameo in the “SexOnTheBeat” video; and Charli XCX stylist Chris Horan contacted Adéla directly about helping translate her vision.

“This is one thing that I’m going to say: The support from the industry right away was so unexpected,” she says. “The coolest creatives do look on the Internet and do reach out to random people like, ‘I want to work with you.’ I didn’t know that.”

“I do want to be really big one day. I want to reach a lot of people, and I think it’s such a beautiful and precious thing,” she says. “I just hope to have a really big impact, which only a couple people get to do.” Right, I nod — only the most unique bitches out there”.

I am going to end here. I am really looking forward to Prima. It is one of the most important Pop debut albums of the decade, and I feel it will get a lot of rave reviews. Beyond that, headline sets and awards await ADÉLA. She is a supernova who everyone needs to hear and follow, as she will be a global sensation very soon. A magnetic and magnificent artist who will be slaying…