Nicole Kidman

Adéla has said the idea for “Nicole Kidman” came from one specific night: a tight corset, bouncy hair, a Golden Globes event, and a same-evening viewing of Eyes Wide Shut that left her thinking, in her own words, “I feel like Nicole Kidman right now.” That’s a thin premise on paper, and the song mostly stays thin on purpose – producers Blake Slatkin and Dylan Brady (with a credited assist from Julia Michaels) build a bright, synth-driven pop chorus around the single conceit of borrowed old-Hollywood glamour, never complicating it with much narrative beyond the feeling itself. It’s the second track on Adéla’s debut album Prima and the record’s fourth single, and it plays like a song written to be a hook first and an idea second, which is a defensible choice when the hook actually works – and this one does, built on a chorus simple enough to repeat and specific enough to not feel generic.

The specificity is doing most of the real work, and it’s concentrated almost entirely in the Hannah Lux Davis-directed video rather than the lyric itself: a shot-by-shot homage reel running through Moulin Rouge!, Birth, and Babygirl, plus a wink at Kidman’s AMC Theatres pre-show ad. That’s a smart bet on a specific kind of referential, movie-literate virality, and it paid off in a way few novelty homage singles manage – Nicole Kidman herself noticed, made her TikTok debut dancing to Adéla’s earlier single “Ain’t in LA,” and later told reporters at a Practical Magic 2 premiere that she knows who Adéla is and plans to see her live in Nashville. A celebrity co-sign that specific and that genuine is not something a label can manufacture, and it’s plainly part of why a fourth-album-track single from a new artist reached the Hot 100’s top 20 and the Global 200’s top three in its first charting weeks.

Strip away the Kidman mythology and the song is still a well-constructed, slightly disposable pop single – hooky without much underneath the hook, which is the main thing keeping this from scoring higher. But “disposable” isn’t an insult when a song is this honest about what it’s for: a specific, happy feeling, borrowed from a specific famous person, rendered in bright synths and handed to a video director who understood the assignment better than the lyric sheet did. 7.1/10 – a well-aimed homage that knows exactly how much weight its own premise can carry.

Hero image: “Prima” album cover art, Capitol Records. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.