What the song is about
Adéla has told the story behind the title more than once, and it is a small one. In January 2026 she went to a Golden Globes party, having no film to promote and no reason to be there beyond being invited. Getting ready, she put on a corset so tight that she started to feel like a movie star — and the movie star she had in mind was Nicole Kidman. “I had the corset on and my tits were pressed up,” she told Capital, “and I was like, ‘Woof! This is glamour. This is Nicole.’” That feeling became the lyric.
Kidman was on her mind for a second reason. While writing the album she had watched Eyes Wide Shut for the first time, and came away annoyed that the film gave Kidman so little screen time. “I wanted more Nicole in the movie,” she said. The song is, in a sense, her giving Nicole more screen time.
So the actress is not the subject; she is the standard. What the song is really about is the moment a young woman decides she can carry herself like an icon of glamour and control, and the pleasure of doing it in public. The chorus name-checks two of Kidman's films, Moulin Rouge! and Babygirl — one a spectacle of performance, the other a study in power and desire — and those two poles are the whole emotional range of the record. Adéla has described her lyrics generally as “exaggerated” and “over-the-top” versions of her own life, and this is the clearest example: a corset and a party, inflated to the scale of a Baz Luhrmann set.
How it was made
“Nicole Kidman” is the second track on Prima, Adéla's debut album, which Capitol released on 4 September 2026. It came out as the album's fourth single the same day, following “Ain't in LA”. It runs 3:01.
The credits are unusually deep for a song this light. It was written by Adéla with Blake Slatkin, Dylan Brady, Julia Michaels, Billy Walsh and Uffie (Anna-Catherine Hartley), and produced by Slatkin and Brady. Brady is one half of 100 gecs and had already produced Adéla's 2025 single “Death by Devotion”; Slatkin co-produced The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber's “Stay” and Lizzo's “About Damn Time”; Michaels has written for Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber and Tate McRae. Michaels also co-wrote Tate McRae's “Sports Car”, another record built on a deliberately retro pop sound.
The beat is built on a sample of “In My Father's House”, a 1986 recording by the gospel group God's Gospel Angels from the album Praise Him — which is why, as Billboard pointed out, hip-hop listeners tend to recognise it before pop listeners do. Reviewing the album for The Sydney Morning Herald, Robert Moran and Barry Divola compared the sped-up, pitched-up sample to Kanye West's early “chipmunk soul” production, and said the song's “handful of tacky references” to Kidman were exactly what made it “feel effortlessly fun”.
What Nicole Kidman thinks of it
The obvious question got answered before the song was out. Adéla revealed the track listing on 25 August 2026, and on 26 August, at the premiere of Practical Magic 2, Kidman was asked about a song bearing her name. She said she was “absolutely” a fan and that she intended to go to Adéla's Red Bottoms Tour show in Nashville on 21 September — Kidman lives there. Adéla, by her own account, freaked out.
Kidman then posted her first ever TikTok, soundtracked by Adéla's previous single “Ain't in LA”. Whatever else the song did, it earned the endorsement of the person it is named after, which is not something most tribute songs can say.
What it did on the charts
It is one of the fastest-rising pop songs of the year. On the Billboard Hot 100 it debuted at No. 45 on the chart dated 19 September 2026 and jumped to No. 22 the following week, taking the chart's biggest gain in streams. Together with “Ain't in LA”, it made Adéla the first Slovak artist ever to appear on the Hot 100; on the 26 September chart both singles sit in the top thirty, the other at No. 30.
Outside the US it has gone further. It reached No. 3 on the Billboard Global 200, No. 4 in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, No. 2 in Singapore, No. 7 in Ireland and No. 21 on the Canadian Hot 100. The album did the same: Prima debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and at No. 1 in Slovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands and Scotland.
Who is Adéla?
Adéla Jergová was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, in November 2003 and trained as a ballet dancer from the age of three, in Moscow, Vienna and London, before moving to Los Angeles in 2022 to make pop music. Her first brush with fame was as one of the twenty contestants on Dream Academy, the 2023 Hybe and Geffen competition that produced the girl group Katseye; she was eliminated in the first round and has called it “the worst year of my life”. She signed to Capitol in 2025, released the EP The Provocateur that August, opened for Demi Lovato in spring 2026 and played Lollapalooza that summer. She names Beyoncé and Lady Gaga as her biggest influences.
The video
The music video, directed by Hannah Lux Davis, premiered on 4 September 2026 alongside the album. It is a run through Kidman's filmography: scenes reference To Die For (1995), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Moulin Rouge! (2001), Birth (2004) and Babygirl (2024), plus the 2021 AMC Theatres advert that became a meme in its own right, intercut with Adéla dancing in a different outfit for each. Metal magazine called it Kidman's “greatest hits” turned “into a high-fashion obstacle course”.
The official video, on Adéla's VEVO channel.