Pop singer Adéla delivered her second headlining performance in Los Angeles on Thursday night at the Fonda Theatre, balancing buoyant tracks from her debut album Prima with a public apology regarding her track “Ain’t in L.A.,” as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Addressing the Crowd and the Hollywood Dream Machine
Roughly 20 minutes into her set at the Fonda Theatre, the 22-year-old artist paused to address the audience about her track “Ain’t in L.A.” “The next song that I’m gonna sing is a little bit awkward,” Adéla told the crowd, according to the Los Angeles Times. “So I’m gonna need y’all to bear with me as I explain why I made a song called ‘The Baddest Bitches Ain’t in L.A.,’ OK? Please don’t boo.”
The track serves as a woozy banger reflecting on her time as a first-round elimination on Dream Academy, the reality competition series that formed the girl group Katseye under the direction of K-pop executive Bang Si-hyuk. Adéla recounted moving to Los Angeles from Slovakia to pursue pop stardom alongside other contestants, noting from the stage, “And guess what? That didn’t work out for me. But it did for them. Shout out to y’all,” as she looked toward the venue’s balcony, where members of Katseye were reportedly in attendance.
Celebrity Presence and Platform Success
The audience on Thursday night also included rising pop star Chappell Roan. Adéla’s performance came on the heels of major commercial success for her debut album Prima, a title referencing her background as a ballet dancer. While “Ain’t in L.A.” has accumulated more than 190 million streams on Spotify, the album’s second hit, “Nicole Kidman,” climbed to No. 1 on the platform’s U.S. singles chart.
According to Genius, the track was conceived following a Golden Globes afterparty where the singer wore a tightly laced corset, prompting her to remark that she felt like actress Nicole Kidman. The song’s rollout featured an instrumental teaser in the music video for “Ain’t In LA,” and its official music video—directed by Hannah Lux Davis—visually references several iconic films in Kidman’s career, including Eyes Wide Shut, Birth, Babygirl, Moulin Rouge!, and Kidman’s 2021 commercial for AMC Theatres.
The track gained further momentum when Kidman herself embraced the song, appearing in a viral TikTok video alongside Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, and Dua Lipa lip-syncing to the track at a Chanel fashion show in Paris, as noted by the Los Angeles Times.
Production Style and Stage Choreography
Adéla recorded Prima alongside producers Dylan Brady of 100 gecs and Blake Slatkin, crafting a sound that pairs chirpy vocal hooks with serrated club beats reminiscent of Britney Spears’s Blackout era. On stage at the Fonda, the performance featured a minimalist set centered around a ballet barre utilized by Adéla and her backup dancers for choreography that grew progressively intricate. Both the singer and a male dancer executed moves en pointe while Adéla performed with long pink hair extensions, a styling choice echoed by many fans in the audience.
Before closing out the night with “Nicole Kidman,” Adéla sat at the edge of the stage with her journal to manifest a long career and express gratitude to her supporters. Readdressing the crowd one last time regarding her critical song about the city, she added, “I really do feel bad,” as the audience refrained from jeering.
