Ada-Nicole Sanger is now 'Grown-Up' and taking on the music industry

I looked at the titles of songs on the back cover of “Entity 23,” the new EP by the singer Ada-, and decided to listen to “My Nightmare” first.

I was startled by the very first sound of her voice. Then I was impressed. There was an Adele-like quality there – something deep and assured and thoughtful. I continued listening as Ada- sang some more about struggles and challenges and finding one’s way forward in this world.

It was all quite different from the last time I had heard her voice. Ada- was not quite 15 years old then. Now she is 24, and she has this EP.

Ada- is Ada-Nicole Sanger. If you’re from the Sanford area, her name may ring a bell. She lives in Florida, but she has family here and spends every summer in Maine and New Hampshire. Her parents met as classmates when both attended Sanford Regional Technical Center in the 1980s.

Her name also may sound familiar because Ada-Nicole first arrived on the scene as a film actress, appearing in the two “Grown-Up” comedies starring Adam Sandler and his friends. If you’ve seen the first movie, released in 2010, then you know who Ada-Nicole is. She’s the one who told Kevin James not to pee in the pool because there was a chemical in the water that would turn the water blue. James did not heed Ada-Nicole’s advice.

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And if you’ve seen “Moonrise Kingdom,” Wes Anderson’s quirky, deadpan comedy about first love, then you’ve seen Ada-Nicole there too. Remember when the boy walked into the dressing room to speak to the girl of his dreams on the night of the big play? Ada-Nicole was the one who told him boys weren’t allowed in there.

Ada-Nicole is now a college graduate and a singer with six new songs to share. She released “Entity 23” in late June and is now doing all she can to promote it – all while busy at work on her second EP, which she expects to launch either later this year or in early 2023.

I interviewed Ada-Nicole on the front porch of her grandparents’ home in Alfred on Thursday, Aug. 11. There are some small-world connections at play here. I went to school with her Uncle Matt. My father carpooled with her grandfather when both were educators at Noble High School in the seventies. I grew up in the same neighborhood with her cousins.

For all those connections, it has been through her art that Ada-Nicole and I have crossed paths. Back in my days as editor of the Sanford News, I interviewed Ada-Nicole upon the releases of both “Grown-Ups” movies. And it had been since the second film – for which she attended its opening night at Smitty’s Cinemas in Sanford – that I had last seen her.

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Professionally, as a singer, Ada-Nicole is actually Ada-. If you thought the hyphens I used in her name above were typos, guess again. It’s there for a reason. The hyphen signifies her creative partnership with musician Dan Kidney, whose band, Dan Kidney and the Pulsations, performed all throughout New York City back in the day. Now Kidney is retired, living across the street from the Sangers in Florida, and collaborating with Ada-Nicole on their music.

“We’re very much an odd couple, but we work so well together,” Ada-Nicole said. “That’s why you have so much diversity in the sound, because you have different influences.”

Diversity, indeed. No two songs on the EP sound alike. “My Nightmare” may have a darker and contemplative approach, but “Say No” is fast-moving, fun, and unmistakably a dip into modern country music, fiddle, mandolin, and all.

“I never set out, intentionally, to write a country song, but I couldn’t hear it in my head any other way,” Ada-Nicole said. “It felt so right.”

“Entity 23,” the EP title song, is about finding your own identity and being comfortable with it. There is a line in the song that goes, “I am my own entity, I am where I'm meant to be.” It was during the making of the song that both Ada-Nicole and Kidney realized how powerful that particular line is.

“It is focusing on being my own entity and representing myself the way I want to be represented and being spoken for the way I want to speak for myself,” Ada-Nicole said.

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She wrote that song – and most of the other songs on the EP – when she was 23 years old and, like everyone else, particularly young people, was working through the isolation and uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic. The whole EP, she said, is an “encapsulation of my experiences as a 23-year-old and how I feel about everything that’s going on in the world – the frustration of the world being shut down and everything being stopped while I’m at that age.”

But, she added, “Entity 23” also is about all of the “crazy expectations we place on ourselves,” especially when we compare ourselves to the successful people we see on social media. Basing expectations for ourselves on what we see in others – especially through the lens of social media – is not realistic, Ada-Nicole said.

“We have to create our own standards for ourselves,” she said.

With “Stay,” Ada-Nicole takes a fresh approach to songs about relationships. The radio is filled with lyrics in which singers call out their exes and settle scores and try so hard to produce the next self-empowering anthem for young women. “Stay” is a song about a couple’s first argument . . . and about acknowledging when you are wrong and trying to make the relationship work and letting the other person know how much they mean to you. There’s decency and modesty in the lyrics.

“It’s easy to wallow in that negative emotion of I-hate-you, I-don’t-like-you-anymore, or I’m-just-really-sad, but a lot of people don’t always take the steps to try and reconcile,” Ada-Nicole said. “The song is about acknowledging you are wrong and let’s figure things out. I think that’s what’s important in any relationship.”

“Ballroom Song” was inspired by Ada-Nicole’s experiences as the leader of her school’s ballroom dancing club. She fell in love with all the members of the club, she said. She called it a wonderful feeling to overcome worries about fitting in with others at first, only to become totally accepted and comforted by them. The song captures that feeling of “just wanting to let loose and be free and dance with these people.

“It’s a love letter to my ballroom dance club,” Ada-Nicole said.

“Crash Over Me” was the first song Ada-Nicole wrote. She had the words jotted down in a journal, and there they stayed for a few years, until the pandemic provoked in her a desire to create music and launch her next phase in life.

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Ada-Nicole named Bruno Mars and Andy Grammer as among her favorites and her influences. Grammer, she said, “has a lot of positive, deep and meaningful songs with fantastic sounds.” She said she appreciates genre-bending music and grew up listening to classic rock.

“I’m a sucker for jazz – any type of jazz,” she said.

And as she pursues her music career, she said she also would like to return to acting – and even there, her strongest admiration is for proven, legendary voices.

“My love of acting and performing all started with the old Hollywood classics with Gene Kelly and Judy Garland,” she said. “I wanted to do all of it: acting, singing, dancing.”

And she loves Julie Andrews, the star of such classics as “The Sound of Music,” “Mary Poppins,” and “Victor/Victoria.”

“She will always be the top leading lady in my heart,” Ada-Nicole said.

As our conversation came to a close, Ada-Nicole said her artistic endeavors – especially her music – have a goal of giving people the sense that they are not alone, that “there are people in this world who understand what they are going through.”

“It’s okay to feel like things are not okay,” she said. “It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to let yourself feel those negative emotions, but I do hope everybody will continue to look for the light and seek understanding and connections with other people. That’s what I try to do through my music.”

Take care of yourself, Ada-Nicole says. Love yourself. Love others.

And while you’re at it: check out her music on streaming platforms everywhere - Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, YouTube, Deezer, and others. Also, you can learn, and hear, more at ada-e23.hearnow.com, as well, and can

“Expect more from me,” Ada-Nicole said. “There will be more.”

Shawn P. Sullivan is an award-winning columnist and is a reporter for the York County Coast Star. He can be reached at ssullivan@seacoastonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Ada-Nicole Sanger is now 'Grown-Up' and taking on the music industry