Decades of reality television, and the extraordinary career of Israeli pop superstar Omer Adam, have taught us that winning a talent competition has little to do with achieving phenomenal success.
Still, getting eliminated from a YouTube reality show at the end of its very first episode is hardly the ideal way to begin a campaign for pop-world domination. Especially when you are barely 20, come from Slovakia and have spent your childhood and adolescence studying classical ballet, only to realize that you would rather be Miley Cyrus than a prima ballerina. It doesn't help when the contestants who survived the competition go on to become KATSEYE, the girl group behind a string of hits and controversies.
Yet, with the benefit of just three years' hindsight, the assessment that led to ADÉLA's elimination from The Debut: Dream Academy seems remarkably revealing. If anything, it suggests that the problem was not necessarily ADÉLA herself, but the format.
"Her performance suited her style," said Son Sung-deuk, a senior executive at HYBE, the South Korean entertainment powerhouse behind the competition. But he felt she had failed to demonstrate enough of her talent. When it was her turn to shine, she did everything she could to display her abilities, he explained. When she was expected to contribute to the group and provide support, however, he found her performance disappointing.
ADÉLA received the news of her elimination with an almost expressionless face, looking neither particularly surprised nor convinced that her world had just collapsed. She would later acknowledge that she had never really seen herself as much of a group artist anyway.
Sure enough, last August, ADÉLA stepped onto the stage at London's Outernet venue, looked to her left and right, and saw only people who worked for her, who would move wherever she told them and disappear the moment she no longer needed them. In the audience were fans who had fought tooth and nail to get into the relatively intimate show, designed to build momentum ahead of her debut album, PRIMA, which arrived just 10 days later.
With the hypnotic appearance of a deadly doll from outer space, charisma powerful enough to bring down London Bridge and dance skills for which Dua Lipa might happily sacrifice a kidney, ADÉLA performed songs already gaining impressive traction in the United States, including KGB, Red Bottoms and Nicole Kidman.
The last of those, enthusiastically embraced by the actress herself, climbed to No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. ADÉLA had already become the first Slovak artist to enter the chart with Ain't in LA, and Nicole Kidman took her even higher. KATSEYE's highest position on the chart at that point was No. 21. In January, ADÉLA is scheduled to return to London for two sold-out performances at a venue twice the size of the previous one. Not bad for someone who was kicked off a reality show after one episode.
The price of fame
Adéla Jergová, to give her full name, was born in Bratislava in November 2003 and is approaching her 23rd birthday. Her story, however, is not the familiar tale of a child prodigy who escaped a life of poverty with nothing but a dream and a few dollars in her pocket.
Entire Reddit discussions have been devoted to speculation about how wealthy her parents might be and where their money comes from. Unverified claims suggest that her father owns a successful fertility clinic and her mother runs a landscape architecture business. Reliable public information on the family's finances remains scarce, and probably not because nobody has been curious enough to ask.
What is certain is that ADÉLA never sat around waiting for money to do the work for her. From the age of eight, she taught herself English through television, particularly by obsessively watching anything connected to her favorite pop stars, from Miley Cyrus' Hannah Montana to interviews and features about Beyoncé and Ariana Grande. The results can be heard in her accent, which sounds more like she was born somewhere along Hollywood Boulevard than in Eastern Europe.
At the same time, she pursued ballet training, including studies in Moscow. At 14, she left home for Vienna and later continued to London's prestigious English National Ballet School. Whatever else she might be, spoiled is not the word that comes to mind.
KATSEYE
(Photo: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
Armed with the self-discipline those institutions demand and enough ambition to swallow a mountain, ADÉLA gradually developed the plan that would take her from The Nutcracker to the pop charts. Her first stop was Dream Academy, where she was one of just 20 contestants selected from approximately 120,000 applicants.
Getting there meant telling her parents she was moving to Los Angeles. "My mom started crying," she recalled, explaining that her mother was happy she had refused to let fear hold her back.
Still, spending two years on the other side of the world came at a price. In a flattering New York Times profile, ADÉLA described feeling guilty both as an older sister and as a daughter, especially about the time she missed with her little sister, who was then five years old. She had missed a great deal, she said, but her family did not resent her for it. On the contrary, they were immensely proud.
In another interview, she recalled that before signing with Capitol Records, one of the most powerful labels within Universal Music Group, her living conditions were hardly glamorous. "I had termites in my apartment. It was so fucked," she told i-D.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that ADÉLA rarely speaks about her father. Her first single, Homewrecked, released in 2024, tells an angry story about an unfaithful man. References to a mother and father have invited interpretations of the song as a personal settling of family scores rather than a fictional narrative.
In Red Bottoms, she draws a connection between dirty shoes and daddy issues. The trouble is that worn-out shoes can be replaced, while emotional baggage from your father is considerably harder to get rid of.
She has nothing but praise for her mother, however. "She's the baddest bitch!" ADÉLA told i-D. She expressed admiration for women who speak their minds without wasting time on unnecessary niceties. As she put it, they are both Eastern European.
Nothing off the table
From her first EP, The Provocateur, to her debut album, PRIMA, ADÉLA makes it clear that she has little patience for games, ambiguity or coy suggestions. She understands exactly what the industry wants from her, what she can deliver and, perhaps most importantly, she wants everyone to know that she understands.
In SexOnTheBeat, she promises to turn rage into sexually charged pop. The accompanying video opens with exaggerated moans against a wall bearing the message "Pop = Sex," alongside an appearance by Christina Aguilera in a tongue-in-cheek segment about using sexuality to manufacture pop stardom in eight weeks.
In Starving Artist, from PRIMA, ADÉLA offers a wickedly sarcastic account of sex with an ex-boyfriend. She now holds the power, both as a woman and as an artist on the rise, while he is still living in the same apartment with little more than pajama pants in his closet. The punchline, suggesting that he eats remarkably well for a supposedly starving artist, is sly enough to avoid falling into the trap of outright vulgarity.
(Photo: Christopher Polk/Billboard via Getty Images)
But as befits a prominent member of pop's Generation Z, a generation that regards the carefully guarded personal lives of Beyoncé and Dua Lipa with suspicion while embracing Billie Eilish's candor and Olivia Rodrigo's emotional openness, ADÉLA ends her album with two strikingly direct and vulnerable songs.
Therapy, for example, sounds exactly like its title suggests: a session on the therapist's couch where everything is laid bare. There is anger toward her father, longing for the younger sister who once called her "Mom," a desire to bring her mother to live with her, and the powerful white men she feels compelled to please if she wants to make that happen.
On the closing track, Ain't in LA, ADÉLA appoints herself a representative of girls who grew up, as she did, far from the supposed center of the world, mistakenly believing that everything important happens somewhere else.
Over a hook reminiscent of Miley Cyrus' infectious anthems from more than a decade ago, she insists that girls like her do not need to run away, that the glamorous mythology surrounding Los Angeles is a lie and that the toughest women are not necessarily the ones living there.
Naturally, the fact that ADÉLA herself lives in Los Angeles somewhat undermines the message. But her outsider's perspective remains an essential part of her public identity, particularly because the music itself is not all that revolutionary.
There are traces of Grimes' extraterrestrial eccentricity and a carefully measured dose of Addison Rae's sweetness, but the most interesting thing about ADÉLA is not necessarily the music. It is the personality behind it.
She is ambitious and vulnerable, possessed of enough self-confidence to circle China twice, yet still carrying the consciousness of an immigrant who understands that everything she has achieved could disappear in an instant.
"I don't know if that's conceited to say," she told Billboard, "but ... I feel like I have heart, and I have something to say." And ADÉLA probably won't stop until the entire world has heard it.