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ADÉLA
Concerts
ADÉLA Manifests Her Billboard 200 Success at Sold-Out Montreal Show: Concert Recap
The rising Slovak star brought her debut headline tour to Montreal, manifesting a top-five Billboard 200 debut that came true days later.
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ADÉLA is a star in the making.
The rising Slovak singer brought her Red Bottoms tour to Montreal's Fairmount Theatre on Saturday (Sept. 12), painting the town pink while establishing herself as one of pop music's hottest artists to watch.
The devotion was already visible before she even stepped onstage: hot pink attire and wigs filled the sold-out, 600-capacity venue, where ADÉLA would spend the next hour delivering the bubbling hits from her debut album, Prima, released this month (Sept. 4), alongside "sickening dance breaks" and a monologue dedicated to her pop star dreams.
The singer marched onstage soldier-style to the sound of footsteps before her track "KGB" faded in, setting the tone for the rest of the show with lyrics about being a "star in the making" and having "studied this s--t" when it comes to carving a lane in pop culture. With just a pink ballet barre and a few backup dancers, ADÉLA commanded the small stage with sleek, synchronized choreography and a bold demeanour seemingly built for bigger stages. The more electronic tracks from her debut EP, The Provocateur, pushed the energy to a fever pitch early in the night, with the flashy, speedy "Go" sending fans into overdrive and causing the floor to shake.
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A classical music interlude marked a shift in pace midway through the set, as ADÉLA performed a quick ballet number, drawing on her classical training, before turning her attention to the crowd. "I've never been to Montreal before, so this is amazing. I feel very welcome," she said, acknowledging the fan art and gifts being held up throughout the audience. She then introduced her breakthrough hit "Ain't in LA," dedicating it to her mother, who had once harboured ambitions of starting a career in Los Angeles herself.
"A couple of years ago I moved to LA because I wanted to make music, but I became fatigued by how much we talk about the same 10-20 people all the time," she explained. "I wanted to write this next song for all the bad b--es from all the small places that you usually don't really hear songs being written about, but they still matter. More often than not, they’re way cooler than all the celebrities that we worship."
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That sentiment landed especially well in a room already dressed in ADÉLA's image. "Ain't in LA" became one of the show's brightest moments as fans belted out its warm chorus, and the singer crowned one attendee dressed exactly like her, complete with pink hair, a snapback cap and a tutu, as the "baddest b--ch in Montreal." The song has been gathering momentum beyond the room, too: after its July release and a viral TikTok trend, it reached a new Canadian peak on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 dated Sept. 12, climbing into the top 50 at No. 48.
From there, ADÉLA moved into the more melodic side of Prima, including the hip-hop-tinged "Marijuana" and "Starving Artist." But before reaching the final song, she paused again, this time to speak her ambitions aloud. Among them: a bigger stage and the hope that American crowds would be "just as good as the Canadian ones," which she described as "so f--ing awesome."
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She capped off the wish list by manifesting a top five Billboard 200 debut for Prima. By the next day, that ambition had already become reality, with ADÉLA announcing on Instagram that the album had debuted at No. 4 on the chart.
Closing out the night with "Nicole Kidman," her latest fan-favourite single, which has even earned praise from its namesake actress, ADÉLA brought the hour-long set to an appropriately maximalist finish. For all the talk of what she wants next, though, the Montreal show made one thing particularly clear: the ambition is already being matched by the performance. For one night, at least, Fairmount Theatre became ADÉLA's own pink-coloured pop world.
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