Adéla Slayed Her Way To Stardom

A few feet away from Adéla sits a conclave of overgrown frat boys, loudly ignoring their bright laptop screens in a side booth of West Hollywood’s The Tower Bar. One of them briefly falls silent when the Slovak singer walks in, trying to place the bubblegum-haired beauty, before continuing to autopsy his recent situationship. The bro’s romance-ending transgression? He openly admired Lindsay Lohan.

“You don’t want to be with her if she’s threatened by Lindsay,” Adéla hisses to me out of earshot, offended on his behalf. “I mean, every time I’m at the movies with my boyfriend, the Wuthering Heights trailer comes on.” But he doesn’t mind Adéla getting all heart-eyed for its leading man, Jacob Elordi, she explains. (Perhaps because the singer’s boyfriend, music producer Jackson Shanks, and Elordi bear a slight resemblance — she whips out her phone to show me photographic evidence.) Finding Elordi attractive is so commonplace as to be almost basic.

“Everybody thinks he’s hot,” she emphasizes, matter-of-fact. “You hear ‘Into You’ by Ariana Grande, you go, ‘This is a good song.’ There’s some objective truths. I like Jacob Elordi and Ariana Grande. I don’t have to be the most unique bitch out there.”

Objectively, though, Adéla is a unique bitch. Today, she arrived without an entourage in a polo shirt printed with Lady Gaga’s The Fame cover art (Adéla was — brace yourself — 4 years old when the album debuted) and her long hair still tendriled from the shower. It’s technically lunchtime, but Adéla, craving a sweet treat, politely requests off-menu buttermilk pancakes with whipped cream from our waiter, Angel. “Wow, I wish I was called Angel,” she gushes.

“Yesterday I felt a little bit depressed — I’m about to be on my period,” she says, as if to justify the pancakes. “I was in the dance studio, and I was just uninspired, and I was really negative about everything. Then I listened to ‘Ordinary Girl’ by Hannah Montana, cried… and I was like, ‘I can listen to this and it brings me to my feet.’ It brings me back.”

“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.”

Beyond her pop-star prowess — contortionist choreography and classical vocal training included — Adéla Jergová is, first and foremost, a fan. She credits Hannah Montana with her artistic awakening at age 3 and later taught herself English by watching music documentaries and YouTube interviews, emerging with an accent so Americanized she only trips over the word “ominous.” Now, in a truly full-circle moment, Adéla will tour arenas across North America opening for Demi Lovato, another of her Disney “big three.”

“I cried when I met Demi because those girls — Miley, Demi, Selena — they are the reason why I will be doing what I’m doing,” she says. “And so when I met her, I was like, ‘I can’t believe that you are real and that you talk to me and that we are friends? And that you want me on your tour?’ Insane.”

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.

“I don’t think my country will be proud of me until I’m certified the biggest thing in the world. You have to escape that so it doesn’t wrestle you down.”

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.”

“Pop music is lawless. You actually can do whatever the f*ck you want.”

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.”

Right now, Adéla fans are getting in on the ground floor, but she won’t settle for being an if-you-know-you-know artist. Adéla wants to be huge. Britney huge. Gaga huge. In her belief system, “popular” and “cool” can coexist; she’s certain her music belongs as much in sweat-soaked warehouse raves as it does climbing the Hot 100. And she’s studied industry mechanics closely enough — call it Pop 102: Lessons from Charli XCX and Chappell Roan — to be firm in her conviction.

“When Chappell came out — I did a deep dive because I’m always so interested — it was so DIY at first, but it worked for the story and it made people attach to her even more,” she says. “And then Brat came out, and I was like, ‘Whoa, the fact that we, as people, are ready to have that celebrated in the mainstream is so interesting.’ It was like, ‘I guess pop music [is] lawless.’ You actually can do whatever the f*ck you want.”

Convincing her parents, however, was another story. After watching the music video for “SexOnTheBeat” — a visceral piece of performance art which has already accrued nearly 3 million views — her mom and dad (a landscape designer and IVF clinic owner, respectively) wondered if it was all too much. And while it is certainly a lot, Adéla’s provocative choreography and nude poses are all part of her statement about the overcommodification of female sexuality.

“‘You do not have a say,’” Adéla remembers biting back to her parents. “That was hard for them, because they were like, ‘I can’t even watch this.’ Then I explained the message, and then my mom actually was like, ‘Well…’”

“I’m not like, ‘Oh my God, I’m the sh*t.’ I don’t think I’ll ever think I’m the sh*t because I’m so hard on myself.”

Adéla’s parents have been instrumental in her career, even when urging practicality. When she was 10, they chaperoned her to Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz tour. When she was 14, they signed off on her move to Vienna to further her ballet career, then supported another leap — this time, to London — when Adéla was 15 to study at the English National Ballet School.

Still, wary of how they might react, the singer auditioned for Dream Academy in secret. When she made it through, their response was overwhelmingly positive — they put her back into dance lessons and supported her financially in Los Angeles after she was eliminated — yet Adéla’s fear of not being taken seriously persisted. It’s a symptom of what she describes as Slavic cultural oppression, a lasting effect of the country’s Communist era that Australasians like myself would recognize as “tall poppy syndrome”: where the openly ambitious are cut back down to size by others in the name of egalitarianism.

“I cried when I met Demi because those girls — Miley, Demi, Selena — are the reason why I will be doing what I’m doing.”

“I don’t think my country will be proud of me until I’m certified the biggest thing in the world, where it’s just undeniable,” Adéla says. “It’s almost like you have to escape that so it doesn’t wrestle you down. That’s why I never wanted to make music there, and that’s why I kept my dreams hidden too, from my family, because I just always knew.”

It turned out to be the ideal springboard for a full-throttle pop ascent. “I think I’m very grounded — I’ve had a really tough upbringing. Even now, people talk to me, and they’re like, ‘How do you feel that everything’s growing so fast?’ And I don’t feel any different. In a sense, I’ve always almost imagined this for me, where it feels just right. I’m not like, ‘Oh my God, I’m the sh*t.’ I don’t think I’ll ever think I’m the sh*t because I’m so hard on myself.”

A few weeks ago, Adéla took herself out for brunch — eggs Benedict and pancakes with whipped cream — and sat there, alone, on her iPad. “Loser vibes,” she says. As she ate, some kids at another table plucked up the courage to approach. “Oh my God, we love you,” they effused. For a moment, Adéla felt embarrassed. She hadn’t pushed through the rigors of professional ballet, bested 120,000 rivals around the world, and endured two intense years at pop star school only to be perceived like this.

Then, Adéla Jergová realized that this, right here, was everything she had wanted, worked and waited for. To be popular.

“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.

Top image credit: Capezio tights, Coach crown