ADÉLA’s debut album, PRIMA, has officially arrived — and it’s one of the sleekest pop albums of the year.
Born and raised in Bratislava, the capital (and largest)city of Slovakia,ADÉLA entered the pop scene’s radar in 2023 when sheparticipatedinDream Academy,HYBEand Geffen Records’ joint “global girl group”reality competition show. Though she moved to the United States the year prior, bringing along laser-focused pop ambition and dance training from both the Vienna State Ballet andthe English National Ballet School, ADÉLA was one of the first contestants eliminated from what would eventually become KATSEYE.
In 2024, less than a month after the Billboard 200-topping group’s docuseries debuted on Netflix, ADÉLA made her debut with“Homewrecked,” afierydance-pop single that presented agripping affair narrative and laid the foundation for her singular, outsider-breaking-in approach to pop self-mythology.“Superscar,” another early fan-favorite, followed soon after, with the announcement of her signing to Capitol Records and the release of herTheProvocateurdebut EP landing in 2025.
This year, ADÉLA has released a steady stream of conversation-building singles, whilehoning her bombastic, dance-driven stage show on the festival circuit and asa support actfor Demi Lovato’s arena-fillingIt’sNot That Deep Tour.During her support set on Lovato’s trek, ADÉLA performed several songs that would eventually end up on PRIMA, including “Ain’t in LA,” the song that made her the first Slovak artist to reach the Billboard Hot 100 (No. 61). ADÉLA co-wrote each of PRIMA’s 11 tracks — alongside contributions from songwriters like Julia Michaels and Theron Thomas, and producers such as Blake Slatkin, Dylan Brady and The Dare — resulting in one of the most concise, clear-eyed debut pop albums in recent memory.
From the second “KGB” raucously kicks off the LP, ADÉLA announces herself as a hungry, at times headstrong and hedonistic pop star who revels in both cynicism and her innate underdog status. She’s a 22-year-old Slovak girl trying to make her American dream — global pop superstardom — a reality while holding on to the idiosyncrasies of her own culture in the face of one of the most domineering and pervasive aesthetics in the world. When she sings of “working the night shift to learn English” on “KGB,” she’s cultivating a touchpoint that connects virtually all immigrants (and their children), leaning into an approach to pop music that invites the listener to participate in her tireless grind, as opposed to forcing them to gawk from the very bottom of the ladder.
That style of pop songwriting is precisely why “Ain’t In LA” has become her ADÉLA’s breakthrough hit — and why the sparse, confessional, early Billie Eilish-esque “Therapy” is the LP’s most arresting track. As her Auto-Tune-drenched voice whisper-sings. “I wanna move my mom out her, but I don’t have that kinda money, so I/ Have to talk to the people that I have to talk to/ They are old white men, and they’re so annoying/ But they hold the keys to my future,” across a despondent piano line, ADÉLA taps into a level of frankness about navigating the music industry that only someone whose journey unfolded on a reality show can. Prima is a brisk listen that leaves quite a bit on the table — it is a debut effort, after all — but it breezes through a slew of vignettes that find her navigating the bitter, lonely end of romantic relationship (“Hitachi”), the fallout of her father’s extramarital affair (“Red Bottoms”) and maintaing control as a young woman in a business dominated by sleazy older men (“I’m the Man”).
Prima certainly houses songs that fail to elevate intriguing individual compositional elements into a complete, memorable record (“Fantasize”) and tracks that offer stale perspective on tried-and-true topics (“Boys”), but those relatively low points barely cast a shadow over the LP. In an era rife with pop singers who don’t really know exactly what they want to say or why they want to make music, ADÉLA has put the entire scene on notice with PRIMA. Vision is everything, and she has one of the most consistent, unique and enthralling ones in the game right now.
Here’s how Billboard ranks every track on PRIMA, ADÉLA’s debut studio album, from worst to best.
-
“Boys”
Driven by a percussive beat that recalls Timbaland’s tabla-showcasing ’00s production, “Boys” finds ADÉLA recounting a typical girls’ night out — and working through the frustration of male attention that’s both wanted and dreaded. It’s a fun switch-up in sound for the first half of PRIMA, but it also feels like one of the more faceless songs on the record.
-
“I’m the Man”
Gender-swapping pop songwriting is nothing new, but hearing ADÉLA float over a sultry, bass-accented beat singing, “I’m the man, and I always like to have the upper hand” is still pretty dope. Between the sultry, bass-accented beat and those tinny, Cashmere Cat-assisted synths in the outro, “I’m the Man” is a solid midtempo number that continues ADÉLA’s unpacking of gender, inspired by her larger exploration of her relationship with her father. How else do you open a song like: “I think I got it from my daddy/ I answer to nobody/ On my knees for nobody, but I love ’em down on me?”
-
“Fantasize”
“Fantasize” is another number that doesn’t feel quite as singular as “KGB” or “Nicole Kidman,” but it’s still a very well-crafted song. From the devilish glee of her vocal performance in the trombone-anchored chorus to the smart thematic sequencing of placing this track directly after “Hitachi,” “Fantasize” is certainly enjoyable, despite its ’90s-nodding sound making for one of the less-interesting sonic offerings on PRIMA.
-
“Marijuana”
Co-produced by Slatkin, grandma (a.k.a. Liam Hall) & Isaac Eiger, “Marijuana” has floated around the ADÉLA-verse for several months now, and it still captures that nostalgia for the carefree, smoked-out haze of the mid-2010s. Truthfully, this hyperpop-indebted ballad sounds like the audio version of your standard Tumblr photoset of Terry Richardson-captured Rihanna portraits. At just 1:50, “Marijuana” almost feels like a glorified interlude, but that moment of spontaneous coitus is a fitting lead-in to ADÉLA coming back down to Earth on “Therapy,” the very next track.
-
“Red Bottoms”
Arriving just a month before “Ain’t In LA,” “Red Bottoms” landed as a Tate McRae-esque midtempo cut that reiterated the fact that ADÉLA is really good at presenting complicated topics through simple phrases and tangible, relatable metaphors. The best part of “Red Bottoms” is still the second half of the chorus, when she sings: “Nobody wants dirty shoes/ Nobody wants dad issues/ Don’t wanna feel secondhand/ Not when it comes to you.” There aren’t many moments in pop music this year as delicious as the way ADÉLA alters her enunciation to make “dirty shoes” and “dad issues” homophonic phrases.
-
“KGB”
PRIMA’s lead single is still the most abrasive song on the record. “KGB” was somewhat divisive among fans and pop listeners when it first dropped, but a few months later, it still rips. Featuring production contributions from The Dare, “KGB” is a relentless electropop banger that wears its stuttering synths and all-around Euro-ness on its sleeve, which allows ADÉLA to use those sonics to fortify her myth-building lyrics. It’s a gutsy move to attempt to subvert the acronym for the Soviet Union’s main security agency in a pop song establishing your origin story — but the Slovak star pulls it off. And those background harmonies in the second chorus? ADÉLA wasn’t playing around when she said she studied Queen Bey.
-
“Hitachi”
This decade has featured plenty of women in pop dedicating songs to carnal self-pleasure, from Megan Thee Stallion’s “Down Stairs DJ” to Chlöe’s “Rose.” ADÉLA joins that class with “Hitachi” — yes, it’s named after the well-known “magic wand” — which also happens to be one of the strongest cuts on PRIMA. More of a proper ballad than “Red Bottoms” but less histrionic than “Therapy,” “Hitachi” is ADÉLA’s plea “to get back how it was” when her ex-lover “used to want to turn her on just like her Hitachi does.” Hearing sweeping strings on a song dedicated to the dependability of a vibrator is obviously kind of funny, but ADÉLA’s vocal performance is so earnest that she really drives home the melancholy that lies in turning to tech to fill a void a human once occupied.
-
“Therapy”
Some will find this song painfully cynical and on-the-nose, and others will herald it as the totally disarming and best song of ADÉLA’s burgeoning career. In reality, it sits somewhere in between — and that tension is precisely why it works so well. Opening with an Auto-Tuned squawk against somber keys, ADÉLA announces: “I can’t really sing/ And I can’t really do anything right now that I want to do/ My voice doesn’t really work.” With pitch-corrected mics and Auto-Tune defining this era of popular music, it’s interesting to hear ADÉLA use those very tools to explicitly address (and cheekily confirm) the very shortcomings they were meant to fix.
She presents them in the throes of an emotional breakdown, however, which allows for a truly cathartic moment on the penultimate track of an album that rides a slow-burning undercurrent of anxiety, depression, and guilt. Even though this sounds like it could be from Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? sessions, “Therapy” leaves ADÉLA with a clean slate for wherever she plans to take her sophomore studio album.
-
“Starving Artist”
Another moment of smart sequencing, “Starving Artist” concludes the narrative trilogy that began with “Hitachi” and “Fantasie” — and officially confirms that the relationship she’s been singing about is over. The chorus here — “Hey, do you still got the same apartment?/ Gray sweatpants, only thing in your closet/ Nothin’ in the bank, but you’re makin’ deposits/ Eat real good for a starving artist” — is pitch-perfect in the way ADÉLA balances a conversational tone with X-rated wordplay that continues building her overall narrative of outsider/underdog creatives pursuing their wildest dreams. And, for what it’s worth, her staccato delivery in the chorus against that booming bass is incredibly infectious.
-
“Nicole Kidman”
Given that Kidman recently made her official TikTok debut to “Ain’t in LA,” it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that ADÉLA named a song after the Oscar-winning film icon. Built over a sped-up soul sample reminiscent of prime Ye (formerly Kanye West), delivers a sparkly, ethereal number reminiscent of early Doja Cat. “Babygirl in control/ I feel like Nicole!” she coos in the hook, slyly name-dropping one of Kidman’s most controversial films. When she hits those gorgeous background vocal stacks in the bridge, which leans into the parasocial nature of celebrity (“Live vicariously through me/ Write my life like it’s a movie”), “Nicole Kidman” cements itself as one of PRIMA’s best songs.
-
“Ain’t In LA”
“Ain’t In LA” will very likely go down as one of the best songs of 2026 — and it’s indeed the best song on PRIMA. It’s a Herculean task to capture the feeling or essence of an established hit song without feeling corny or reductive, and somehow ADÉLA, with the help of Grammy-winning songwriter Theron Thomas, did just that. Sure, Thomas’ chopped-and-screwed intro is reminiscent of the one he rapped on Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop,” but where that 2013 track felt of-its-time, ADÉLA’s breakthrough hit (and Prima album closer) is more concerned with using a nostalgia-framed memory of that time to inspire her present-day journey from unknown Slovak dance student to global pop star.
From its anthemic hook to ADÉLA’s meaningful assertion that superstars and “the baddest b—ches” can come from any corner of the globe, “Ain’t In LA” feels like a pivotal moment in contemporary pop songwriting. ADÉLA doesn’t just want listeners to see themselves in her; she wants to inspire them to work as tirelessly as she does for whatever individual goals they may have.
