Inside the Magical World of JazzTok Star Stella Cole
Stella Cole never expected this life. She craved it, of course, touring the country and singing jazz standards to audiences, but it never felt possible. Who would want to listen to her sing songs from movies from the 1940s? Did anyone still listen to jazz? How could she make her mark? To Cole, it seemed as if jazz grew further and further from the mainstream. But then, TikTok, or more specifically JazzTok, became a big deal.
Cole, originally from Springfield, Illinois, is just 26 years old. Since she posted her first cover video in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she has become a JazzTok juggernaut, much like her peers Laufey and Samara Joy. After initially posting Judy Garland-esque covers with YouTube backing tracks, Cole is now signed to Decca, the same label Dorothy herself was once singed to.
Prior to her climb (she started going viral after only about a month of posting 2021) Cole had completely given up singing. Studying in Northwestern University’s musical theater program, Cole felt as if she didn’t quite fit. “My voice was different than other people’s, and I couldn’t do the pop singing, high-belting thing. That wasn’t me,” she says. “It was very inauthentic to me, what was ‘cool at school.’”
Due to the pandemic, and a quick hiatus from university because “the Zoom theater class is not for me,” Cole spent time rediscovering many of her comfort movies like Singin’ in the Rain, The Sound of Music, and The Wizard of Oz. After some light encouragement from her father, she began posting covers of songs from those films. “At first I was like, ‘No, that would be humiliating. That’s so embarrassing.’ But TikTok was new, and people didn’t have TikTok yet,” Cole says. “After about a month of posting every day, the first videos got a couple hundred-thousand views. Then, it started on its path to becoming what it’s become now.”
The “now” she’s referring to is her second album, It’s Magic, out today, and a global tour. “There’s a lot of pressure in the music industry these days that if you make an album, every song on it should sound kind of different,” she says. But that wasn’t the case with some of her favorite records by Nat King Cole or Ella Fitzgerald. “When they did an album with strings, it sounds like a cohesive piece. You can listen to 45 minutes of it and be taken away,” she says. “That’s how I wanted [my album] to feel. It does feel magical, to me at least.”
Below, Cole discusses her rise, vocal health, and JazzTok.
There was no discouragement at the beginning because there were no expectations. It honestly felt like this little game to play on my phone, and my dad was super into it as well. We were just like, “We’re bored. We have nothing to do.” My dad and I would be so excited when I got 50 views, and then we were so excited when I got 300 views. That was huge. Every little success felt very mind-blowing at the time because of the place of low confidence I was coming from. I started playing it like it was a game with the algorithm and everything and being like, “If I post every day, I bet I could get 10,000 followers.” But I never imagined the kind of success I ended up having on social media.
You started singing with karaoke-style tracks on YouTube. Now you sing with a band. What was that adjustment like?I’ll never forget the first time I played with a jazz band, because I didn’t study jazz in school. I had never known any jazz. I had never seen much jazz. I did not know what I was doing when I showed up to New York and I was like, “I’m going to get on the jazz scene.” What I did first when I got to the city was working a job walking dogs to make money and pay my rent. I would see all these restaurants with signs being like, “Jazz Brunch on Sunday,” and I was like, “Somebody’s got to sing at that Jazz Brunch. Couldn’t it be me?” I started DMing and emailing every restaurant, bar, hotels. If they had a piano in the lobby, I was like, “So do you ever play that piano?” And they’re like, “Who are you?” I just was like, “Let me sing. Someone let me sing.”
The first person to answer my DM was this restaurant called Giovanni’s Brooklyn Eats. Giovanni has jazz musicians come every weekend. He DMed me back that day and was like, “Yeah, come sing a song with the band tonight. We’ll see.” I showed up and played with this jazz trio, and I’m sure I sounded a little bit awful because I had no idea what I was doing, but Giovanni thought I sounded like Judy Garland. I ended up going there three times a month for the next six months or something. That was my very first gig. It was definitely a transition, but I’m so glad that I had gigs like that, a restaurant or a bar, where everyone’s so loud they couldn’t even hear me at all. I had to mess up a lot of times with a jazz band and not understand how a jazz solo works. I was out at jazz clubs till 4 A.M. in the morning every night, just completely nocturnal, living this insane life, just soaking in everything.
It’s Magic is out today.
The story is kind of strange, because it’s the opposite to the usual story. I grew up wanting to be on Broadway and wanting to move to New York, and that was always my dream. I was very scared of failing at that dream because I wanted it so badly. It kept me from actually seeing it as a reality. I always had this very deep confidence of, “I know I can do it. I love it so much,” but there was all this insecurity layered on top. I grew up in a small city in Illinois. I had never known anyone who had been a professional singer or anything. [My parents] were the ones like, “No, you need to go to school for theater. Go to school for what you love.”
Would you ever go back to musical theater?I would love to. Broadway is still such a dream. The magic has not gone away at all for me. Every Broadway curtain call, I weep because I’m just so happy for everyone up there who’s made it. It makes me emotional to even think about. When I was in school, there was not so much jazzy stuff on Broadway. Maybe Hadestown was jazz-inspired, but now there’s Maybe Happy Ending where there’s a Frank Sinatra character, and the Bobby Darin thing, [Just In Time] is happening. There is so much jazz on Broadway. I think the Broadway culture is shifting in a lot of ways, but perhaps towards more jazz influences, which is amazing.
How did you create your It’s Magic tracklist?There are a lot of songs on here that I’ve been obsessed with for a long time. “Till There Was You” I’ve known since I was in the second grade. It’s sort of all over the map–songs that I love, and songs where I really relate to the lyrics. When we were deciding what should be on this album, I was having trouble, because I just released my first album last August. So first, I was thinking of darker songs like “Cry Me a River” or “The Man That Got Away,” these very cabaret, darker songs. It wasn’t feeling right to me. I felt myself gravitating toward all of these love songs. I wanted it to feel like an album where you can just walk around anywhere and sort of be taken away to some other place.
Is the Stella Cole on stage an extension of yourself, or do you view her almost as a character you’re playing?There’s definitely a “Stella” and a “Stella Cole.” I had a lot of anxiety when I was first starting out. I went from playing in these restaurants to playing at Birdland and playing in all these big jazz clubs. I was definitely having a lot of imposter syndrome. It was a way to fight the nerves, to look in the mirror and be like, “Okay. Now it’s not me anymore. I’m in the gown. The hair is done. The red lip is on. We’re Stella Cole now. And she’s so confident.” It helps me to think of it as a character, but the more that I’ve gotten comfortable on stage, I am very much myself. I’m always thinking about my life so there can only be so much separation.
Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. They’re not inspiring to me only in their singing, but also in the way that they act a song. Their whole body and brain and feelings are all in that song. They just are so in it. They’re actresses too. Judy Garland could tap dance. Nat King Cole is another huge inspiration. He just is so calming. I can listen to him, and it just makes me take a deep breath without knowing. Frank Sinatra is another big one, and then I think Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Kelly, and Julie Andrews. All these people from musical theater. Jonathan Groff, even.
It’s the best. It’s something I never imagined when I was growing up. I was the only person I knew who loved these songs. I didn’t know there was such a community of people out there who love it. I think there’s more of a community because people like Samara or Laufey are introducing millions of people to jazz standards. Once people hear it, they love it. Most of the people who originated this music, they're dead now, so it's hard for it to live on without people keeping it alive.
There’s so much chaos in the world, and so many heartbreaking things happening every day and infuriating things. I think people are craving something slower and of a different time. I always clarify that’s not to be confused with being like, “Oh, I miss the ‘40s.” I think there’s something about the art that was being created in the ‘40s, like jazz music and, specifically in these old movie musicals, the old Hollywood magic. The world was not magical back then. The world was really hard. They were creating this sort of escapist and magical art. I think people are craving that because of the chaos of today as well.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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