DON'T Talk to Adéla About Rick Owens, Sneezing, or Living Without Edward Cullen
Welcome to mixed feelings’ Hyperspecific, a profile series of increasingly intimate questions in which we ask our favorite artists, characters, musicians, and the like to unveil their innermost selves — their weird existential musings.
“Adela is the definition of rejection is not your destination.”
This is the first comment under a video of Adéla performing her song “Homewrecked” on October 22 while opening for Demi Lovato with the caption “A star was born tonight in Los Angeles.” Though the commenter is alluding to Adéla’s fame origin story, competing for a top spot in the girl group that is now Katseye on the hit Netflix show Pop Star Academy, they suggest that Adéla was perhaps always meant to be a solo artist.
I’ll admit I let the video loop for four minutes straight, noting the way she reclines her head back to hit a gorgeous high note in her chest voice, the wind blowing through her spotlit hair, the attention she commands on the stage.
Adéla is a burgeoning pop star if I’ve ever seen one. When she comes to our studio, she wears 8-inch platform black leather heels shaped like lobster claws, matching cotton shorts and a bra, and an oversized leather jacket. She has an inherently cool way of carrying herself, as well, confirmed by each answer she shares.
In our interview I found myself moved by her ambition, charmed by her repeated use of the word “sickening,” and her vitriol for fashion boys. It’s not often you meet someone who you believe to be truly at the cusp of superstardom, but that is Adéla. And even if the cards are mysteriously not stacked in her favor in the future, much like Ali Rose in Burlesque, there is nothing she will stop at in pursuing her dreams.
Read her Hyperspecific interview below, and sell yourself on Adéla. — Amalie MacGowan
LEVEL I
Something you’re always hoping people bring up in conversation.
[First of all], I hope they talk. Sometimes when I meet people, they want me to talk entirely too much and I already talk about myself a lot. I write about my life. I do interviews like this…It’s really nice to have a conversation. Like, no, let’s talk about you.
[But also] Beyoncé. I can talk about everything Beyoncé and Madonna. Just pop culture in general. Pop culture is to me what World War II is to the middle-aged white man. I know everything about that shit.
MF: What about when people ask you about ‘Dream Academy’?
I’m like, okay, I get it, that it’s a part of the lore, but I think there’ll come a point where I’m like, I don’t want to fucking talk about this anymore. It’s been a year. Obviously it’s quite the experience to go back to mentally, but I’ve done a lot since then.
What’s a positive trait people always tell you you have?
I think people are always excited about how hardworking I am. I did ballet as a kid, and there’s no way to be good at ballet if you’re not the hardest worker in the room. I think it just taught me so much. I also was not the best, per se, naturally, because ballet, you have to have a specific, very niche body [type]. You have to have hyperextended knees and arch-y feet, and I didn’t necessarily have all of those things at first. I needed to work extra hard to still be on top, and I was, so it was really sickening.
I’m from a small ass country. To me, nobody’s ever done anything lit in the sphere that I would want them to do it in. We’ve had really good tennis players and hockey players, but I’m a girl and I do not give a fuck about that. I give a fuck about singing and dancing, and I didn’t have my Slovak GOAT, so I wanted to be my Slovak GOAT. That’s what I wanted to do.
One destructive trait you know you possess and wish you didn’t.
I can’t stop. I am not a quitter, basically. I think quitting is harder than if you keep going, sometimes. I can’t quit in relationships and certain career moves. I’m just like, no, it’s fine. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. Then I want to [die].
I eventually do end up breaking up with people or quitting career moves where I’m like, “okay, this is clearly not for me,” but I wish that I didn’t have to get to that point, if that makes sense. I wish I could just, in a very healthy way, be like, “oh, I don’t think this is for me,” and then just move on, but I can’t move on.
If a bodega were to name a dish after you, what would it be? (Be specific.)
This is so New York, I’m from Eastern Europe. It’s so funny.
Okay. Well, something with duck. I fuck with duck heavy. I always get duck everywhere I go. It’s like a niche thing. But maybe a nasty, slutty, but smartly layered duck sandwich. [Then some] caramelized onions and then… like a brie maybe, and then a fig jam. Wait, I kind of ate. I don’t cook. I should make that. Write that down.
One song that makes you feel understood.
I’ve just been listening to this Lily Allen song. I was walking through New York and it was drizzling and I was wearing this purple hoodie from Los Angeles Apparel — the “One Less Lonely Girl” hoodie — and I was listening to “Littlest Things” by Lily Allen and I felt like I was in a movie. I really just was living, and my hair was kind of wet. It was blowing in my face and people were running into me and I was like, oh, New York. Yeah.
Something you think is wildly underrated.
Me? Say that. Me. I think I’m super underrated. You need to tap in everyone. You guys just need to listen and watch. If you come to my show, I’m really good at what I do. You guys, I work super hard. Please. If you listen to anything, have it be “Sex on the Beat”. Listen and watch that music video. I think it’s really good, and I know that it will turn some people off, but I kind of think it’ll turn the right people off, so it’ll do the work for me.
LEVEL II
A movie/tv show you watch when you want to self-soothe.
Pride & Prejudice (2005) with Keira Knightley. I love that shit. I remember I showed it to so many people, and nobody gets it. The first time I watched that movie, I watched it three times in one day.
Also Twilight. I watched [it] when I was a child, when I was an infant. I couldn’t speak English back then. [For Breaking Dawn — Part 2], I was able to go into the movie theater to watch it, but they were speaking in English and there were subtitles. I was too young and I couldn’t read fast enough to read the subtitles in Slovak, so my mom was holding me on her lap and she was whispering the subtitles to me out loud as they were going, just so I could watch it. It’s a core memory, and I was shook. I was shook because Carlisle died. Everybody died. I was like, what the fuck? I just invested all of my early childhood years into this story and now it’s over? Who would’ve thought? But then they gagged me. Everybody was clutching their pearls. And then they were still happily living afterwards.
What is your problematic favorite artist, actor, dead or alive?
Trisha Paytas. I really fuck with her. I want to eat Raising Cane’s with Trisha Paytas.
I grew up watching her videos and then I met her the other day [at Demi Lovato’s All Night release party] and I was like, “We’ve mukbang-ed together so many times. You don’t even know.” I would just eat while I was watching her eat. And she’s like, “Let’s do it in real life.” And I was like… I tweaked. I tweaked out.
This is me calling out Trisha Paytas. You better keep your promise. [Ugh], and she was holding her rainbow Birkin, her rainbow rhinestone Birkin. Sickening.
What is the first fandom you lost yourself in?
Hannah Montana. Miley Cyrus for sure. And then I was an Arianator, hardcore. I still am. Another one of my GOATs.
[My favorite Ari album is] either Sweetener or My Everything right now. And then for Miley, my favorite Hannah Montana song was “If We Were a Movie.” I loved that shit. It always sent me, I was wailing as a kid. I didn’t understand what she was saying. It was just music language to me.
What is something you bought recently after LOTS of research?
I usually don’t research things. I just buy and then regret. I actually do the exact opposite. I will just see something and I will not try it on — I’ll not do any of the necessary steps that you should do to be happy with your purchase. I will just buy blindly and then be really upset afterwards. Just kind of, like, to make myself feel something.
I bought this dress at a flea market and it’s red and sparkly and I was like, this is so Kate Moss. Nobody saw the vision. I was like, you’re going to see the vision. And I put it on and it was the ugliest fucking thing ever. It did not fit me. I looked like a door. It was so fucked up. Then I tried to gift it to a friend and she was like, fuck no. Nobody wants it. It’s in my closet.
A fictional world you want to live in and why?
Harry Potter? Because I think I’d be a baddie. I’m a Slytherin. Me and Draco Malfoy. Ugh, I just thought about Jojo Siwa cosplaying Draco Malfoy. I said Draco Malfoy and just saw Jojo’s face.
MF: What about ‘Twilight’?
It was just too drama — the Volturi, everything. I saw Death Becomes Her yesterday, and that’s about eternal life, and I was like, yeah, this shit would suck. I am so glad for death. I’m so glad that there’s an end to this. I’m so excited to have a rest. I would hate to just keep living, but if you have Edward by your side… the only way that I would [choose to live forever] is by having Edward. I would have to steal Edward away. But I’m not a home-wrecker.
Random thing in your home that always requires explanation?
This is my boyfriend’s home, but I put it up there. It’s a picture of my best friend Emily. It’s her headshot, and me and her, we put it above his bed when he wasn’t home. And we were just like, when is he going to notice that her headshot is just above his bed? And so he noticed and he was like, this is pretty lit. And now it’s there. And then I haven’t seen him in two weeks and he was just calling me the other day and he was like, I need to take this shit down. It’s weird. You’re not here. Your best friend’s headshot is above my bed. I don’t know. It was funny.
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LEVEL III
What’s an anecdote you usually tell to describe how you were as a kid?
Well, I mean, I guess the way that I learned English explains a lot. I just did it in secret. I guess when you’re from Eastern Europe, and you’re eight, nobody expects you to be so obsessed with [American pop culture]. To the point [where] I learned English completely fluently and I didn’t tell anybody. And then, after a year, I just could speak English with an American accent and my parents were like, “What? I guess she learned a language at the ripe age of nine.”
I was just watching a lot of American YouTubers. I was watching My Life as Eva and Bethany Mota back in the day, LaurDIY, all of those people. I was doing it with the purpose of wanting to know more about American culture. I was just so fascinated by it. And I wanted to be on the Disney Channel. I had a plan where, at 15, I was going to fly to LA. I looked up the address of the Disney Channel headquarters. I was like, this is where I’ll go. My godfather lives in Hawaii, he won’t mind moving for pilot season. [Now] I’m like, how the fuck do you know when pilot season is? You’re eight and you’re from Slovakia.
So that, or [the fact that] I was just a shy kid. There’s this one story where my mom says I would sing to myself at all times. I was always singing, and she was like, there’s something wrong with her. But I would not want to be heard. And one time I was on the bus with my mom coming home from school or something and I was singing to myself, but I was doing it a little too loud. And this is one of those stories where it’s like, and then everybody clapped, but they actually did clap because it was so cute. And I got so upset. I started crying. I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m being perceived.
But now I love being perceived.
What is your lowkey hell and actual heaven?
Lowkey hell is being surrounded by exclusively Rick Owens-wearing young men — guys that only wear the tightest jeans ever made. Let them balls breathe! It’s okay, please just let it be. Because, it’s like a specific type of person, the fashion bros. No hate to you guys. (Well, I guess a little.)
I had this interaction with this person. It’s just like, why do you have so much Rick Owens at such a young age? And then you ask them what they do and they never can give you a straight answer. Usually it’s just like they have a [nepo baby vibe] and they think they’re so cool and it’s like… just chill out. Tell me your actual vibe.
Actual heaven is a whipped cream. I love whipped cream. I get it with everything. Everything. And pancakes. I’m a huge pancakes girl.
What is your most unhinged coping mechanism?
I don’t know if I have a coping mechanism. I think I’m pretty hinged. I don’t get crazy. And if I do, I literally let everybody know. I’m like, I’m tweaking out. I need to be alone. Nobody talk to me. I want to listen to music. I want to make my Pinterest boards. I want to be in my blanket. I want to eat my whipped cream and have a think. I love to think in peace, in silence and write it down. I write essays. Maybe that’s a little unhinged.
What is one random thing you hate so much for no apparent reason?
I hate sneezing. I fucking hate sneezing. And I hate hiccups. Sneezing or hiccups. No purpose, just pain and suffering. You just have to hiccup for no reason. It’s stupid. And I think sneezing is so annoying. I literally get so pissed off. I have to stop everything and make a noise and it’s a physical thing? Like, what? It drives me insane.
This is ballet trauma. You couldn’t sneeze loudly, because they would be like, like, I don’t know, it’s ballet, they would get mad. You couldn’t even drink water. It was insane. So basically, I block my sneezes. Everyone always says I have a “Pick Me” sneeze, but it’s like, no this is ballet trauma. I don’t even let loose, and if I did let loose, then what? Saliva and snot is going to fly out? I’m not doing that.
MF: What other negative things did ballet leave you with?
I think becoming an old, decrepit, petty woman is something that I fear because I’ve seen it a lot in ballet, and I get it. You guys were ballerinas in communist times. That sucks, but, hey, sorry, I’m just trying to dance. Sis, I’m 12. Get a therapist. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m just trying to do my little step.
How do you exit a party?
Irish Goodbye. Don’t say bye to anybody. Just leave.
How you wanna go (either un-seriously or seriously).
I hope that I die in a really peaceful vibe. I would really love to be super old and be surrounded by my family and just kind of go into a slumber.
YO. [She pauses.]
I’m really into true crime, but have you heard about the woman that basically had her head almost cut off? It was halfway off…and she crawled and found help and she’s alive. They sewed it back on. She’s alive. I’m like, I don’t think I would have the fight in me at that point. Even in a zombie apocalypse? Bitch, I’m one of the zombies. I’m not struggling. I’m not living in fear. I’m a diva. Zombies like brains and there’s a lot of brains in the world, so there’s a lot of food and they’re kind of just living. So I’ll do that.
What an icon, this was so fun to read!
she's amazing