This Wednesday, Stella Cole opened the evening of the Nice Jazz Fest on the stage of the Théâtre de Verdure. At 25, the American, a fan of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, is a newcomer whose rise was made via social networks.
You can find everything on TikTok—funny or lascivious dances, inspired comedians, billions of cute cats, top-flight or Sunday chefs. And you can even come across some beautiful voices. That of Stella Cole, for example.
This Wednesday evening, the Nice Jazz Fest’s audience discovered her as an opening act at the Théâtre de Verdure. Just before the Cuban pianist Alfredo Rodriguez and the American saxophonist Kenny Garrett, the singers Jordan Rakei and Omah Lay and the group Jungle brought the crowds to the Scène Masséna side.
TikTok sensation
During the COVID-19 period, Stella Cole began publishing videos of herself performing pieces from the Great American Songbook, the cream of the famous Yankee song from the 1920s to the 1960s. Quite quickly, the counters went crazy.
“It was incredible. There were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views each time. I lived with my parents in nowhere, almost in the woods. I was walking with them and my dog. And besides that, everything was moving very quickly online. I started posting for fun because I missed singing in public so much. And then I told myself that maybe there was something to do,” explains the Illinois native, followed by 838,000 people on Tiktok.
“When the world opened up again, I understood it wasn’t just a story of unreal numbers on my smartphone, that real people were behind all this. In New York, where I live now, people recognize me on the street. I started playing with a band I didn’t know. The transition happened almost naturally, without me noticing it,” continues the 25-year-old singer.
As she confirms to us, this leap into “real life” could have seemed like a leap into the void. “There was a scary side when I started doing shows, it’s true. I went through very small clubs, bars, restaurants, and hotels. I played five or six times a week. I gained a lot of experience. And it was more fun than singing alone in my room while filming myself.”
New album release
“I don’t consider myself a jazz singer,” Stella Cole ponders. “I listened to Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald. But I was even more immersed in the songs of Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand or old movie soundtracks.”
Like many musicians, especially among members of Generation Z (which refers to people born between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2010s), Stella Cole doesn’t bother with labels.
“I’m not sure genres matter much. What matters is the connection you can feel when you listen to a song.” This results in a repertoire where she combines a cover of “Flowers”, a hit by Miley Cyrus, with “Uptown Girl”, by Billy Joel, to return to “P.S. I Love You”, a 1934 classic sung by Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday and Diana Krall. Not to mention the eternal “Cry Me A River”, a song that has passed between the vocal cords of an infinite number of great names.
On August 30, Stella Cole will present her first album. We will hear a cover of “My Future” by the very modern Billie Eilish. If you missed the Nice Jazz festival, buy your tickets on time for next year!
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