THE NEW STANDARD: STELLA COLE’S REVIVAL OF AN OLD SOUL

Words by Delaney Willet

This isn’t your great-grandmother’s jazz—or maybe it is, reimagined for the TikTok generation vocalist Stella Cole. A recent Instagram post, where she joked that “they didn’t play ‘Moon River’ in the club,” perfectly captures the 26-year-old’s blend of nostalgia and modern wit. Cole sings with the ease of another era, inviting listeners to step out of the present for a moment and sink into something cinematic. Her velvet tone nods to early inspirations Judy Garland and Ella Fitzgerald, but she brings a freshness that’s distinctly her own. Rather than feeling dated, Cole’s sound fills a gap in the noise of Gen Z’s feeds.

Her covers of mid-century standards—Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and songs you’d expect to hear drifting through a grand hotel lobby—offer comfort across generations. For some, it’s a return to the soundtrack of childhood; for others, it’s an introduction to an undiscovered music library. You hear Cole while scrolling and instinctively pause. The voice is warm, familiar, grounding. It’s this transportive quality that’s carried her from explore pages to the top of the charts. Following the August release of her third album, It’s Magic , and ahead of her upcoming world tour, Cole joins BASIC to reflect on the line between dreams and reality—and where the two have started to meet.

How did you find your style? What inspired you to cover classic ballads?

I was singing as soon as I could talk. My parents showed me The Wizard of Oz when I was two, and I became immediately obsessed. I watched it every day for a year and knew every word of the songs by the time I was three. I did community theater in my hometown—old Broadway productions that exposed me to many of the songs I now cover: shows from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. I didn’t know that what I’m doing now, what I began doing as a child, could even be a job. I didn’t think there was an audience for singing standards. I was a weird teenager—never listening to pop music, only putting on old records. Not much has changed since then.

How did your education in jazz take shape?

People who really know this genre may not call me a jazz singer—I may fit more into the 50s pop category—but genres aren’t even that real anymore. Whatever people call me, I’m usually happy with it. I didn’t go to music school. I went to college for musical theater, with a double major in international relations and a minor in journalism. I was doing all of these random liberal arts things at Northwestern in Chicago, and I struggled in the musical theater program. I quit singing for a year or two because I became really discouraged. I was different from everyone else in terms of what I liked to sing and what I could do. I didn’t want to do the pop thing—high notes, loud belting. I could do it, but it didn’t feel natural or normal. It felt like I wasn’t being myself. So I didn’t get into many musicals, and I wasn’t getting much support from my voice or music teachers. I quit at the beginning of the pandemic and never thought I would have fun singing again. I wasn’t enjoying using my voice at all at the time. I decided to focus on being an actor and hoped maybe film would work out.

Your career blossomed on TikTok at the start of COVID-19. What was it like to find an audience during lockdown?

I had never posted videos of myself singing online before. I started because the world was shut down, and I was rewatching my comfort movies and remembering how much I loved those songs. I had lost touch with that part of myself, along with a lot of my personality. I was a bit lost in college. I was living with my parents during the pandemic, and my dad encouraged me to post singing videos on YouTube. I refused. I was like, ‘No! That would be so embarrassing.’ I chose TikTok because none of my friends were on it yet. Suddenly, my account had 90,000 followers, then 100,000—but nothing in my actual life was changing. It felt like a game on my phone. The most I thought about it was, oh, this is strange. I still dreamt of singing in Paris jazz clubs one day or playing Birdland in New York, but it all felt very far away. My success existed only online. It didn’t feel real until I moved to New York. As my presence grew, I started playing little restaurant gigs. People would fly across the ocean to see me sing in these tiny venues because they were fans. For a long time, my online influence and real-life career were completely mismatched. I feel like my brain is still catching up to all of it being real.

What is it like to be a young person specializing in a genre from another generation? How does your audience range, and how do you play to them?

I didn’t know there were this many people over 40 on TikTok, but a lot of them follow me. Their response is mostly, ‘Thank you for singing these songs again. Finally someone has brought them back.’ I’ve been more surprised by the young people on the apps who are learning jazz because of Laufey or Samara Joy. It has come to the forefront of pop culture in the past few years, and a new generation is engaging positively with this genre they’ve never heard before. My favorite thing about what I do is introducing people to this kind of music.

How do you navigate your classical application of a modern medium? What is the significance of this gentler music today?

My content is different from what a lot of people are doing—or at least, I was one of the first people doing it. That’s a big part of why I wanted to create this album: to quiet the world’s chaos, even for a moment. I wanted to create something that felt balanced, calm, and flowing. I wanted it to be a sort of lullaby. This music was made in the late 30s and early 40s in America, an incredibly difficult time for the country. There were political issues, the economy had collapsed, and the biggest war yet was looming. When people feel nostalgic for this music, they yearn for the 30s and 40s—which couldn’t be more inaccurate. This was escapist media, an idea of Hollywood that was a fantasy. There is definitely a place in the world right now for art that is political. My devotion is to the art that happens to be an escape for people. I’m happy I’m able to create nostalgia for a time that never truly existed. It lifts people into another world where things feel easier and more beautiful.

Your story can read like a fairytale—though one forged through hard work and a commitment to authenticity. To date, what has been your biggest “pinch me” moment?

A big dream realized recently was in London, when I was able to perform with a full orchestra for the first time at the opening night gala of the London Jazz Festival. It was at the Royal Festival Hall, a packed 2,700-seat theater. These are songs meant to be performed with a full orchestra, so that was wonderful. The fact that I’m living in New York is a dream in and of itself. My whole life, I planned to move to the city and be on Broadway. This is even better. Now, I travel to Paris twice a year to play in venues that house 1,000 people. Travel is so rewarding. I spend so much time in Italy now, which I never could have imagined a few years ago. I get to take a few days off between tours to kayak in Portugal or hike in Norway. My life is bizarre! I’m from Springfield, Illinois. I didn’t grow up around people taking boats through Norwegian fjords. This was not the vision I had for my life at all. I could not be more grateful for it.

From Cleveland to Hong Kong, you have captivated the global stage over the past five years. Where can we find you next?

It seems I’m constantly on tour at this point, which is fine with me. I’m on my Christmas tour for the entirety of December. In January, we’re doing another month-long U.S. leg before heading to Asia, which I’m thrilled to announce here for the first time. I’ll be in China and Korea—two places I’ve never visited—and returning to Japan. Musically, I don’t think I’ll ever stop singing the standards. That is where my heart lies. This album is the manifestation of what I was trying to accomplish with the first record—I’ve finally done it, so I want to move onto something a bit different. I’m writing music for the first time, so I’m excited about the idea of sharing that. I’d love to do Broadway, return to my acting roots, and try my hand at movies or television. I don’t know, I have so many goals. We’ll just have to see what I get to do first.

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