Adila Sedraïa, best known by her stage name Indila, is a French singer and songwriter. Her mother was a caregiver, while her grandmother sang at weddings; she has two older sisters. Indila describes herself as a “child of the world” as she is of Algerian, Egyptian, Indian and Cambodian descent. Prior to her singing career, she worked as a tour guide at the Marche International de Rungis. She explained that her stage name comes from her insatiable love for India.
Her meeting with record producer Skalpovich allowed her to enter into the world of rap and eventually collaborations with several French rappers. Indila began her music career around 2009, providing vocals for a variety of artistes. “Hiro” by Soprano was her first successful collaboration, reaching number 26 in the charts in France and 27 in Belgium. She continued to collaborate with several other French rappers and DJs over the next three years, She also composed the songs Plus Haut by Matt Pokora along with “Avec Toi” by Axel Tony featuring Tunisiano, in which she is credited by her real name “Adila Sedraïa”. “Avec toi”, which was produced by Skalp, reached number 7 in the charts in France in November 2012.
In November 2013, Indila released her first single—”Derniere Dance, from the album Mini World—which quickly found success. It reached the top 10 of the French charts in January 2014 The song remained in the top 200 in France through April 2015, for a total of 77 weeks in the top 200. It was also a success outside France; by the end of February 2014, “Dernière danse” was the number one song on iTunes in Greece and Romania, and the number two song on iTunes in Turkey. The music video for Dernière danse, released in December 2013, reached 100 million YouTube views in July 2014 and has over 700 million views as of January 2021.
In February 2014, Indila released her first album, Mini World, which was produced by Skalp. In addition to “Dernière danse”, two other singles from the album reached the top-20 in the charts in France: “Tourner dans le vide” (“Spinning in the Emptiness”), which reached number 13, and “S.O.S”, which reached number 8. The album was the number 1 best-selling album in France the week of its debut and remained in the top-10 best-selling albums through October.
A limited-edition CD/DVD version of Mini World was released in November 2014, with two new songs, orchestral versions of “Tourner dans le vide” and “Love Story”, an acoustic version of “S.O.S”, and videos of live performances of several tracks from the album. A second limited-edition release of Mini World in February 2015 contained the ten tracks from the original release, the two new songs from the first limited edition, and another new song. Mini World found success both in France, where it was the third-best-selling album of 2014, and outside the country, where it was the best-seller of 2014 in Poland and second-best-seller of 2014 in Belgium.
In October 2014, Indila won the MTV Europe Music Award for Best French Artist of 2014. She won Best New Album of the Year award (for Mini World) at the 30th Victoires de la Musique in February 2015. Indila was among the ten artists to receive the Europe Border Breakers Award in 2015. On 23 August 2019, Indila returned with a new song “Parle a ta Tete”.
