Chatting With … Stella Cole ’21

Fresh off a 10-show European tour to Paris, London and Florence, Italy, singer Stella Cole shared the story of her viral rise and the role Northwestern played in launching her singing career. Cole double majored in theater and international studies at Northwestern and now lives in New York City. Her debut album is due out in August.  

How would you describe your musical style? 

My sound is a throwback. It is sort of old-fashioned and inspired by pop and jazz singers of the ’40s and ’50s. When I was younger, I always felt like the odd one out for being interested in different music than everybody else. In high school I was listening to Judy Garland records and Barbra Streisand cast recordings.  

But then in college I went through this phase of trying to fit into this box of modern musical theater singing, whatever that means. And it was not working for me. It didn’t feel authentic. I wasn’t getting into any of the musicals at Northwestern, and I thought, “Maybe I’m not good at this.” 

So I quit singing for a while at Northwestern.  

How did you find your voice again? 

During my sophomore year, I took a class with Stephen Schellhardt [a former music theater lecturer] on the Great American Songbook. I’m not sure I’d be here if not for that class.  

Singing made me quite anxious at that point. I was terrified to sing in front of people. But on one of the first days of class, I had to sing a song. 

[Schellhardt] assigned me “Happy Days Are Here Again,” the iconic Barbra Streisand song. I was so nervous — probably close to hyperventilating. He actually had me turn and sing to a wall so I couldn’t see my classmates, and he said, “Just ignore everything. Ignore how your voice sounds. Just sing. Tell the story of the song.” That was a life-changing piece of advice. 

Afterward he and my classmates were like, “Wow, you can sing!” I think I sang for the first time with my full chest. That helped me break out of my insecurities about singing. 

Then, when COVID happened during junior year, I moved home to Springfield, Ill. To fill my time, I was watching all my old comfort movies: The Sound of Music and Singin’ in the Rain, Mary Poppins and Meet Me in St. Louis. These movies make me cry tears of pure joy. I was telling my dad how much I missed singing and how I’d been loving all these old movies. And he said, “You should start posting some singing videos on YouTube. Try it again.” I said no because my friends might see that, and it’d be so embarrassing. 

But there was this new app called TikTok. …

Stella Cole (photo by Timothey Abel)

You went viral on TikTok. What happened next? 

I moved to New York City shortly after I graduated. I was trying to do the theater thing and had my “survival job,” walking dogs. I wondered if I could make more money singing, so I started emailing and DMing hundreds of restaurants and hotels. Eventually a few answered. My first gig was this restaurant called Giovanni’s Brooklyn Eats. I wasn’t really making any money at first, but I was getting paid to sing, and that was so, so exciting!  

I played in a ton of restaurants and in front of coffee shops in Harlem. Eventually I was doing that like five or six nights a week. I didn’t have to walk dogs anymore. And then I realized, maybe I could do this onstage. Now here I am, fresh off a European tour. 

How has Northwestern influenced your success? 

Northwestern was my No. 1 school. I knew that I could get one of the best educations in theater and music, but I also could get one of the best academic educations.  

I learned so much about the world at Northwestern. My Russian literature professor Gary Saul Morson — I still think about him and that class once a week. I studied abroad in Germany and traveled around Europe. I learned to act. It was such a well-rounded education. My acting teacher, Cindy Gold, would always say, “Nobody wants to watch an actor who’s never read a book. To be an interesting artist, you have to be an interesting person. So quit focusing on how you look and go to a museum.” 

What’s been surprising about your career so far? 

What surprised me is how many hundreds of people have come up to me after my shows and said that they were brought to tears by my music or that watching my videos has been a comfort during a difficult period in their life. I’ve seen the way that music, and specifically this music, can touch people’s souls. That sounds [silly], but as an artist, that’s the goal. 

What can fans expect from your debut album? 

Every single song on the album feels like it was written about my life. They’re all standards, but they feel so personal. For people who have only seen 30-second videos of me on the internet, I’m really excited for them to get to know me as a singer in a deeper way.  

I’m doing an album release show at Sony Hall in New York on Sept. 22. That will be the largest New York venue I’ve played. And then I am going on a six-week U.S. tour this fall, followed by three weeks touring Europe.