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Looking at the career of Stella Cole – whose third release, It’s Magic, is just about to be released by Decca Records US – from a distance, you might perceive a kind of disconnect, as Marshall McLuhan would say, between the medium and her message. McLuhan, who died in 1980, had never heard of the internet, YouTube, music streaming platforms – and neither did the vast majority of songwriters whose work she champions: Frank Loesser, Meredith Willson, Ray Noble, Sammy Cahn, or Jimmy Van Heusen.
Likewise, none of the great artists whose legacy she honors, like Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Nat “King” Cole, or Rosemary Clooney, would know what it meant to “go viral.” As it happens, this is how Stella Cole first got noticed by the music industry and, more importantly, the larger world beyond: by performing her own interpretations of classic American popular standards and using the internet to share them.
However, a closer look reveals that these iconic artists were no less keen to embrace new media: long-playing recordings, television, stereophonic sound – these were all new technologies in the 1940s and ‘50s. The idea of bringing classic American songs to new platforms hardly begins with the young Stella, yet she has accomplished that more resoundingly successfully than virtually any other artist working today.
Stella, who was born in a small town in Illinois in 1999, comes naturally to her repertoire – the material chose her just as much as she chose it. “I grew up on old movie musicals,” she remembers. “When I was two years old, my parents sat me down in front of the TV and turned on the VHS of The Wizard of Oz. I loved it so much that after that, I asked them if I could watch it every single day for over a year. I've just been obsessed with that movie my whole life, and because of it, I started singing before I could even talk.”
From there, the youngster gradually absorbed the entire canon of classic Hollywood musicals: Singin’ in the Rain, Meet Me in St. Louis, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music and others. “Those are all my very favorite movies ever.” She adds, “So I just grew up on this music. And I think my parents accidentally sheltered me culturally, in a way. We watched all these films and we listened to all the soundtrack albums – and occasionally some James Taylor and maybe Norah Jones. And we didn't have cable TV or anything. So that was kind of it.”
She continues, “I thought this was what everybody was listening to,” she continues, “I didn’t realize anything different until I was in high school.” She enrolled at Northwestern University – not formally studying music or singing, but taking on a double major of theater and international relations.
As an artist, Stella found a way of thriving – and launching a musical career – at a moment when most performers were struggling. At the height of the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021, she began posting videos of herself singing on YouTube, Tiktok, and other social platforms. Lots of other singers of all ages were already doing that, but Stella was virtually the only one to parlay viral video views into a real opportunity. Her performance of “Everybody Says Don’t” (from Stephen Sondheim’s lesser-known Anyone Can Whistle), hit 40,000 views right out of the gate; James Taylor championed and reposted her video of the beloved standard, “Moon River.”
After graduation and the end of the lockdown, she moved to New York, where her career really went up a notch. She began working live all over the city, and was soon seen at Birdland, the Café Carlyle, and even Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden. In 2023, she worked with Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, with whom she toured the entire country, as well as Australia and New Zealand. Her interpretations of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” and Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers” added over ten million more views and streams to her list of accomplishments.
Stella went into high gear not long after arriving in New York when she met the veteran, Grammy-winning producer Matt Pierson. “Someone introduced us and we started talking,” says Matt. “I was immediately taken with her focus and dedication to the music. She said she was interested in recording, that we should get together, and that's how it all started.” Before seeing Stella perform live, he had already been impressed by her talent as he saw it on YouTube and TikTok.
He admits now that he had a hard time believing what he was seeing and hearing. It wasn’t Stella he distrusted, it was the social media – “I almost jumped to the wrong conclusion, because social media can be so confusing to those of us that didn't grow up with it being there.” He elaborates, “I assumed that there was no way this 23-year-old could sound so mature and understand these classic songs so well. But when I got to know her, I realized that she was for real. That was her actual tone!.”
So far, the team of Stella and Matt have completed two projects, both released independently. Her first album, known simply as Stella Cole, was a mixture of familiar ballads with strings and winds interlaced with a few uptempo numbers and a couple of obscure tunes that amounted to Easter eggs for music buffs, like Frank Sinatra’s very obscure “Walking in the Sunshine.” Stella Cole also includes one highly-original take on a recent work, Billie Eilish’s “My Future.” Their second offering was a seven song EP collection of holiday songs titled, simply, Snow!, on which the title song, from Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, was a duet with Glee TV and current Broadway star Darren Criss – and a major highlight.
For their third collaboration, Stella and Matt have once again teamed up with the highly-accomplished New Zealand-born arranger, conductor, composer, and pianist Alan Broadbent, one of the great music men of our time. It’s Magic is a more focused work than their previous efforts: it’s all vintage love songs – the newest is the 1966 theme from the classic British comedy Alfie set against the backdrop of the most lush and romantic string backdrop imaginable.
The vision for It’s Magic was to take on songs that were familiar, but somewhat unconventional, including “Stairway to the Stars,” “My Ideal,” and “Fools Rush In,” all of which utilize the more intimate backing of a string quartet, as opposed to the full 24-part string orchestra. The package varies from classic show tunes, like “Till There Was You” from The Music Man, to iconic film themes, like “As Time Goes By,” a Stella favorite from Casablanca, Doris Day’s 1948 hit “It’s Magic” from Romance on the High Seas, and Burt Bacharach’s main title theme from Alfie (1966). Above all, there are jazz and songbook standards, like “Say It” and “The Touch of Your Lips.”
“When I was younger, I always thought of performing – singing or acting – as kind of an ego-driven, self-centered kind of career,” says Stella, “that people who did it were all totally focused on themselves.” But, she reports, “During the lockdown, thousands of people were sending me messages saying, ‘You don't know how much you've helped me,’ and ‘your music is the one thing cheering me up right now.’ And so I was sort of shocked by that because I hadn’t realized that music had that kind of power to help people. It’s amazing to think that my music can be a bit of a salve or a balm for people's stress and anxiety. Don’t forget, these songs and this music helped people get through the Great Depression and World War II.” She concludes, “That’s the most gratifying thing of all, experiencing how this music can actually help people.”
