Some artists seem to arrive into the pop arena fully formed. Take Adéla, for example. At just 22 years old, she's already making waves in pop music, most recently with her hit, "Nicole Kidman."
The song just cracked the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it recently hit No. 1 on Spotify's top U.S. songs chart. Her debut album, PRIMA, debuted in the top 10 in the U.S. and several other countries, plus she's coming off the heels of The Red Bottoms tour, her first headlining concert run.
That success is the result of years of hard work, dating all the way back to when she first started taking ballet lessons at just 3 years old. Growing up in Slovakia, she studied American television to learn English, and after becoming a fan of Hannah Montana, she decided she would stop at nothing to become a pop star herself.
In today's session, Adéla stops by the World Cafe studio to talk about her debut album, PRIMA, her relentless work ethic and how Dream Academy, the cutthroat reality talent competition that produced KATSEYE, gave her a crash course in the music industry.
Interview Highlights
On her ballet training
"Ballet is an amazing art form, and it's so rewarding because, literally, the more you work, the better you get. Because no one is born being good at ballet. No one's a natural, day one. You can have certain predispositions that make you maybe more talented, per se, but you really need to put in a lot of work, and so that was very motivating to me. I was, like, 'If I work hard enough, I can be the best at this.' Which I definitely worked very hard, and then I kept doing it, but I kind of grew a little bit fatigued of the lack of artistic freedom within the medium because you just dance classical ballet — you know, Swan Lake is Swan Lake and that's always gonna be Swan Lake.
"I got injured when I was 14. I've loved music my entire life. I've been singing my entire life. I always took singing lessons on the side, and I would write songs on the side, but it was kind of a thing that I did for myself.
"I mean, honestly, it was unnerving to me too. When I was 11, I remember being, like, 'Why do I have this feeling that I'm gonna do music instead?' It was like Troy Bolton in High School Musical. Music was just such a savior through that. I started writing songs, and it just felt like every day, going to ballet class, it just stopped connecting day by day. At 16, I quit, I moved back home, and I went to high school, and my parents were, like, 'No art for you' — because they were scared. They were, like, 'You just did art for your entire life and you quit, and you were really good at it? Like, find a real job.' I honestly wanted to be a lawyer when I was a kid, but then my education got kind of messed up with all the ballet that I was doing."
On her experience in Dream Academy
"I remember walking in and feeling like I thought that you guys would have this more figured out ... Even these big companies and these creatives behind all these big moments in pop culture, you think these machines are so calculated, but a lot of the times they're just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. They're just trying to figure it out, too. But then you have a lot of adolescent girls that have to suffer those consequences of you figuring it out.
"That's the kind of scary-but-honest thing about the entertainment industry, which is interesting."
On producing songs with choreography in mind
"There's two types of dancey songs. I say that there's a dancey song that people that can't dance, dance to ... Those dance songs with very simple four on the floor, pulsing beat that just gets you moving ... Then there's the Britney 'Me Against the Music' or 'Toxic' songs that are so danceable for dancers specifically.
"Interestingly enough, space in a song is so good for dancing, because you get to hold something out, and then a beat comes in and another sound comes in. Those things are so interesting, because then you imagine choreography to it."
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus. Our executive producer is Bruce Warren.
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