A year ago, ’s London debut at The Lower Third felt like a glimpse of an artist operating several stages ahead of herself. In a 200-capacity room, she brought ballet, theatricality and the kind of physical command usually reserved for much bigger productions. Ten months on, the upgrade is impossible to miss. ADÉLA returned to London last night with a sold-out show at Outernet, taking the core of what made that first performance so compelling and expanding it into something grander; with dancers, a larger production, a growing catalogue and an audience that has grown tenfold with her.
The audience dressed accordingly. Fans sporting pink wigs in ADÉLA’s signature hairstyle turned her visual identity into a uniform of sorts, a fitting visual for an artist whose look has become almost as recognisable as her music. The show opened with ‘’, ADÉLA singing, “No, I’m not being cocky, I just worked my whole life,” later declaring, “I’m like a spy, I studied this shit.” These could sound like the usual would-be popstar declarations of greatness, but in her hands they feel more like a proclamation.
The confidence is not the opposite of the work, it is the result of it. There is something genuinely joyous about watching an artist this early in her career perform with so little hesitation. ADÉLA is still only ten songs deep into her story, yet there’s no sense of an artist still figuring out how to occupy a stage and put on a show. Her vocals are remarkably assured, her movements are deliberate, and the artist-audience interplay feels instinctive, not over-rehearsed.
More importantly, the core hasn’t changed; the pink hair, the stare and the red-bottomed attitude remain, but the world around her has grown. That growth feels particularly significant in the context of recent single ‘Ain’t In LA’. Becoming the first song by a Slovakian artist to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, ‘Ain’t In LA’ has grown beyond its cheeky premise into an anthem for talent existing outside a transactional industry. For anyone who has ever felt different, too unknown or simply not in the right city, its message is simple: perhaps the centre doesn’t have to be somewhere else. The baddest bitches aren’t in LA. Judging by the crowd at Outernet tonight, they’re in London. It’s one of the most special moments of the show, with the entire room shouting the lyrics back at her.
That sense of claiming belonging gives the show’s spectacle its weight. For anyone in the crowd, myself included, who has had to leave home, move to a bigger city or cross borders in pursuit of a dream, there is something reassuring in watching ADÉLA turn that distance into part of her identity rather than something to overcome. She isn’t trying to convince anyone that she belongs here: she’s showing them what happens when you decide you do.
Recently the cover star of , ADÉLA is moving beyond the language of the “rising artist” into something more substantial: an artist beginning to define the terms of her own arrival. London got to meet the ‘PRIMA’ of pop. The title of her debut album means “first” – fitting for a debut, but also a reference to being the lead ballerina of a company. For an artist whose identity has been shaped by dance, the double meaning is intentional. ADÉLA has spoken about becoming the “prima ballerina of pop”. In London, flanked by a synchronized troupe of dancers, working a stage ten times the size of last year’s, the show itself speaks louder than any of her words could. ADÉLA looks like an artist ready to claim the title she has already given herself.
With ‘PRIMA’ arriving September 4th, ADÉLA isn’t simply promising to become pop’s next provocateur, she’s already claiming her space in it on her own terms, with her own language, and with a captive crowd willing to follow.