Adéla is done dreaming in secret.
It’s hard to imagine that the singer, with her fuchsia hair and contagious confidence, was ever quiet about what she wanted. But she knew that no one from her home country, Slovakia, had ever done what she believed she would — become a global pop star — and she worried people would try to discourage her.
“At a very young age, I was like, ‘This is crazy,’” she remembered thinking. When she was 8 years old, Adéla Jergová — today, she performs as just Adéla — began trying to reverse-engineer Miley Cyrus’s career, convinced that a role on the Disney Channel would be her ticket to stardom, too. She also studied the careers of Madonna, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, watching every documentary and interview she could find. “I think mostly everything I know, I’ve learned from them and my mom,” she said.
Now, her once-private dream is unfolding in public. She made her Billboard Hot 100 debut last month with “Ain’t in LA,” her breakout single about her mother’s own dreams of moving to Los Angeles; “Nicole Kidman,” another song from her new album, was briefly the most-played track on Spotify in the United States.
On Saturday afternoon, hours before her second sold-out show at Brooklyn Steel, Adéla, 22, sat cross-legged on the music hall’s balcony, looking remarkably at ease. It would be her third night in a row performing — the most consecutive shows she had ever played — and she was feeling it. “I’ve had some back problems,” she admitted. Still, she looked out at the empty venue with a grin. “This is the best job ever,” she said.
Just a few months ago, those who knew Adéla at all most likely knew her as a contestant on “The Debut: Dream Academy,” a “Making the Band”-style YouTube reality show that resulted in the formation of Katseye. Selected as one of the 20 hopefuls from 120,000 applicants, she was voted off by viewers in the first round; audiences who saw her as too exacting and ambitious cast her as the show’s villain.
Though she was competing for a spot in a girl group, Adéla said she never saw herself as much of a “group person.” Her ambitions were apparent to others, too: Before her elimination, one of the judges said, “We see Adéla as a solo artist.” Adéla used the audio to promote her first single, “HOMEWRECKED.”
Adéla produced the song and its music video with the help of friends who, she joked, were doing “charity work.” At the time, she was in the United States on a student visa and enrolled in Santa Monica College, taking music classes. Eight months later, in May 2025, she signed with Capitol Records.
With a label behind her, Adéla released an EP, “The Provocateur,” followed just over a year later by her first full-length album, “PRIMA,” which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard album chart.
“PRIMA” moves freely between the personal, the political and the sex-positive. On “Therapy,” for instance, she sings about missing her mother and sister, who still live in Slovakia. On “Starving Artist,” she recounts the sex she had with her ex-boyfriend.
Adéla made “PRIMA” with the producers Blake Slatkin and Dylan Brady, recording primarily in Slatkin’s home studio. “No one was writing a song about a little girl in Slovakia looking at this faraway place, being like, all the answers are there,” Slatkin said of “Ain’t in LA.”
Brady was struck by her determination. “She has a really clear vision and seemingly knows how to do all the right things to get there,” he said.
Some of that discipline comes from her years of ballet. “There’s a love for working hard and improving,” she said. “It’s satisfying for me to work at this thing that I love because I see what hard work can bring you.”
She also knows that she would eventually like to use her platform to support other women, pointing to Olivia Rodrigo as an example of the kind of artist she hopes to become. Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields festival raised $20 million for women’s and girls’ charities. “She is going to change some people’s lives, truly, not just through a song,” Adéla said.
But the larger Adéla’s world becomes, the more complicated the dream becomes. “There’s some older sister, some daughter guilt,” she said. “I just left to make this dream of mine come true.”
Adéla moved away from her family at 14 to pursue ballet when her younger sister, Stella, was only 5. At 18, she left again to join “Dream Academy.” When she returned two years later, her little sister didn’t feel so little. “I missed out on a lot,” she said. But those years away were part of what made this life possible, and her family knows it. “They never hold it against me. They’re so proud.”
And that support is what she says will keep this fame — which she has been chasing for years now — from defining her. “If I fail at this, I still have a family that loves me. I’m still healthy. I still have worth.”
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