(Polydor)The 22-year-old is impressively frank about indulging industry sleaze in her pursuit of fame on a debut that puts a distinctive spin on the best of 00s hedonismThere’s something very striking about hearing a pop star in 2026, their voice larded with Auto-Tune, opening a song with the line “I can’t really sing”. We live in an era where fans seem more aware than ever of the nefarious music business machinations that lurk within the star-making process, one where you’re never far away from online outrage decrying some artist or other as an industry plant. Nevertheless, admitting that the ubiquitous audio processing software is sometimes deployed for a helping hand, not a futuristic aesthetic, feels strangely jarring. On one hand, well of course it is. On the other, actually announcing that without it, you might be honking like a despondent goose, in the first line of a song, still amounts to a dramatic breaking of the fourth wall.That said, it’s very much on brand for Adéla Jergová, who started her career as a contestant on a TV talent show – she failed to make the cut for crumbling “global girl group” Katseye, as documented on Netflix’s Pop Star Academy – before established names alighted on her as a more left-field solo proposition: Grimes co-produced her early single Machine Girl. New artists are well advised to have a USP, something that helps them cut through the mass of peers vying for public attention on streaming services. The 22-year-old Slovakian has chosen to differentiate herself from the serried ranks of post-Brat female pop stars by spiking her songs about hedonism and messy sexual encounters (“no bed frame, we can do it on the carpet … you eat real good for a starving artist”) with a kind of meta commentary on what it is to be a female pop star. Continue reading...