ADÉLA Put Her First Two Hits in the Global Top Five at Once
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ADÉLA
ADÉLA
Two positions tell the story. On the Billboard Global 200 dated 3 October, ADÉLA’s “Nicole Kidman” ranks No. 3 and “Ain’t in LA” ranks No. 5. According to Billboard’s weekly chart highlights, she is the first artist this year to place her first two career hits in the top five of both the Global 200 and the Global Excl. U.S. ranking at the same time.
ADÉLA is a 22-year-old singer from Bratislava, Slovakia, signed to Capitol Records. Both songs come from her debut album, PRIMA, which entered the Billboard 200 at No. 4 in September. This is how the two singles reached those positions, and what moved them week on week.
The Positions, Chart by Chart
- Billboard Global 200, 3 October: “Nicole Kidman” No. 3, “Ain’t in LA” No. 5.
- Billboard Hot 100, 3 October: “Nicole Kidman” No. 11, its peak so far; “Ain’t in LA” No. 27, also a new peak.
- Billboard Hot 100, mid-September: “Nicole Kidman” No. 45; “Ain’t in LA” No. 30.
- Billboard 200: PRIMA entered at No. 4.
- Spotify Daily Top Songs USA, 22 September: “Nicole Kidman” at No. 1.
Two details stand out in that list. “Ain’t in LA” was the first entry, reaching the Hot 100 in August, but “Nicole Kidman” passed it within a month of the album’s release. And the Hot 100 climb was steep: from No. 45 to No. 11 in a matter of weeks, a gain of 34 places.
The Spotify position matters for the same reason. When “Nicole Kidman” took No. 1 on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA on 22 September, it displaced Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas”, the country crossover single that had spent months at the top of the US charts, Billboard reported.
The Streaming Tally, Week on Week
Luminate figures published by Billboard show how quickly “Nicole Kidman” grew. In PRIMA’s first week of release, 4 to 10 September, the song collected 5.76 million official on-demand US streams. The following week, 11 to 17 September, it rose 66% to 9.59 million.
A shorter window shows the same curve. Over the five days from 11 to 15 September it earned 6.14 million official streams. Over the matching five days a week later, 18 to 22 September, it reached 9.3 million, a rise of 51%.
The social numbers moved with it. By 24 September the song had been used more than 1.5 million times on TikTok and played 131,000 times on Instagram Reels, its music video had passed 10 million views, and it had picked up a viral dance trend, according to Billboard. Across her catalogue, ADÉLA has passed half a billion global on-demand streams this year, Luminate data cited by Billboard shows.
Why the Two Songs Rank Differently
The two singles reached the top five by different routes. “Ain’t in LA” came out in July and built slowly. It is a 2010s-style pop song about refusing to romanticise fame, written with Theron Thomas, Blake Slatkin, Dylan Brady and Billy Walsh, and its chopped-and-screwed intro nods to “We Can’t Stop”, which Thomas co-wrote in 2013, Billboard’s Chartbreaker profile reports. ADÉLA pushed her team to release it after fans reacted to it on tour, when the team was less sure.
“Nicole Kidman” arrived as the album’s fourth single on the day PRIMA was released in full, in early September, and moved faster. Billboard attributes its rise to a delivery that nods to Doja Cat and Ariana Grande, lyrics that call back to Kidman’s films, and a music video built for short clips. It is the higher-ranked of the two on both the Global 200 and the Hot 100.
The gap between them is the most useful reading of this run. One song grew through touring and word of mouth; the other was designed for the feed and reached the top of the rankings in weeks. Both now sit in the global top five together.
How Ain’t in LA Came Together
The song that started the run began with a photograph. Before the session that produced “Ain’t in LA”, ADÉLA kept returning to an old picture of her mother as a teenager, who had also once dreamed of moving to Los Angeles, sitting in front of her own collection of pop-culture posters, the Chartbreaker profile reports. After hours on other material, she asked the room to try one more idea, and the song came together quickly from there. The picture made it into the lyric: “Madonna on the wall next to Destiny’s Child”.
The irony is not lost on her. The song rejects the romance of Los Angeles, yet it was recorded there. “I was kind of fatigued with celebrity culture,” she told Billboard, before pointing out that her next single was called “Nicole Kidman”. She wanted a 2010s feel, she said, and was listening to a lot of early A$AP Rocky at the time. On tour with Demi Lovato she performed the song before its release, in pointe shoes as a nod to her ballet training, and the reaction from those crowds is what convinced her to push for it as a single.
A Song That Needed Permission
Before releasing a song with the actress’s full name as its title, ADÉLA asked Nicole Kidman’s team for permission, Billboard reported from her interview with Pop Crave. Kidman agreed, then reposted the music video, talked about the song on social media and used it in her own posts. According to the Chartbreaker profile, Kidman also paired her first-ever TikTok video with “Ain’t in LA”.
She joins an established line. Billboard notes that Kidman’s former husband, Keith Urban, wrote several songs drawn from their relationship, including “Gemini”, “Without You” and “Steal My Thunder”, and confirmed that Kidman inspired the last of them. ADÉLA’s version simply puts the name in the title.
“I can’t believe Nicole Kidman knows who I am,” ADÉLA said. A celebrity endorsement does not appear as its own line in a ranking, but it multiplies the clips and reposts that feed the streaming tally, and the timing of the climb lines up with that attention.
From Dream Academy to the Global Top Five
The chart run is the latest step on an unusual path. ADÉLA trained as a ballerina by day and studied English at night, Billboard reports. In 2023 she competed on Dream Academy, the HYBE x Geffen competition series on YouTube that formed the group KATSEYE. After her elimination she went solo, releasing the singles “Homewrecked” and “Superscar” in 2024, signing with Capitol Records in 2025 and opening for Demi Lovato on tour this spring.
A debut set at Lollapalooza in August came just before PRIMA’s release. “She’s become somebody everybody really wants to root for,” co-manager Sam Jacobson of Good World Management told Billboard. Her chart success now sits alongside that of the group formed by the same competition, a comparison the rankings make easy to measure. When she was eliminated, she left the other hopefuls a message, captured in the Netflix docuseries Pop Star Academy: “If you get it, that’s great, but you don’t need it. You’re great on your own.”
What to Watch on the Next Charts
The question now is staying power. A No. 3 global position built in a few weeks can fall as quickly as it rose, so the next three or four Global 200 rankings will show whether “Nicole Kidman” holds its position or settles lower. “Ain’t in LA” has the opposite profile: a slower climb that is still producing new peaks.
Long runs are the measure that matters on this site. Earlier this season, 18 straight weeks in the top 10 made Dracula a K-pop record for Jennie. ADÉLA has the two positions; the next test is the weeks. Her ongoing tour through North America and Europe gives both singles a live push to go with the streaming numbers.
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