Stella Cole | News | INFOTEXT - Stella Cole "It's Magic"

1. TILL THERE WAS YOU          3:54     (Meredith Wilson)
2. SAY IT                                     4:19     (Frank Loesser/Jimmy McHugh)       
3. IT’S MAGIC                            3:39     (Jule Styne)
4. STAIRWAY TO THE STARS    3:33     (Mitchell Parish/Matt Melneck/Frank Signorelli)
5. ALFIE                                      3:47     (Burt Bacharach/Hal David)
6. AS TIME GOES BY                 4:20     (Herman Hupfeld)
7. THE TOUCH OF YOUR LIPS 3:58     (Ray Noble)
8. IMAGINATION                      4:24     (Jimmy van Heusen/Johnny Burke)
9. MY IDEAL                              3:44     (Newell Chase/Leo Robin/Richard A. Whiting)
10. FOOLS RUSH IN                 4:33     (Johnny Mercer/Rube Bloom)

Vocals: STELLA COLE
Piano: ALAN BROADBENT / Bass: MICHAEL MIGLIORE / Drums: HANK ALLEN-BARFIELD
Arranged by ALAN BROADBENT / Produced by MATT PIERSON

 

Die unsterblichen Hits des Great American Songbook, geschrieben von den großen Meistern ihres Fachs für Hollywood-Filme und Broadway-Musicals, erweisen sich auch in unserer modernen, viralen Welt noch immer als charismatisch und relevant. Den Beweis dafür erbringt Sängerin Stella Cole. Mit über 1,6 Millionen Followern in den sozialen Medien, einem weltweiten Tourplan und zahllosen Fernsehauftritten in ihrer Heimat USA, brachte die 26-jährige Künstlerin ihren Fans bislang die Klassiker näher, mit einer großen Stimme, die sich mit legendären Vorgängerinnen messen kann, und ganz viel Gefühl. Ihr drittes Album, das erste für ein Major Label, nahm sie in den Power Station Studios in New York City mit Produzent und Manager Matt Pierson (Samara Joy, Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau) auf. Sogar den Jazz- & Songbook-Papst und strengen Kritiker Will Friedwald hat Stella Cole mit ihrem neuen Werk überzeugt!

 

INFO

Looking at the career of Stella Cole – whose third release, It’s Magic, is being 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!.” 

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.”

 

ALBUM LINER NOTES BY WILL FRIEDWALD

Upon listening to this album, I’m not surprised to learn that “Say It” was and is a song that holds a particular fascination for the young singer Stella Cole. As a representative sample of what we call The Great American Songbook, “Say It” is at once typical but also a kind of an outlier. Like many classic songs, it was written for a forgotten film – in this case, a 1940 radio-inspired comedy titled Buck Benny Rides Again. It’s one of a few dozen or so songs with words by Frank Loesser in Hollywood (and music by the veteran composer Jimmy McHugh), well before he became a composer-lyricist-producer-publisher on Broadway. “Say It” became a standard thanks to Sinatra and Dorsey, who also inspired John Coltrane to play it on his masterpiece 1963 album Ballads.

What makes “Say It” particularly special in the emerging canon of this remarkable 26-year-old is that she is one of the few vocalists I have ever heard – of any generation – who understands and even embraces the inherent contradictions of Loesser’s striking lyric. In the text, one lover is telling the other to “say it … over and over again” but for the most part the meaning of “it” is implied rather than directly stated. Loesser was an expert enough songwriter, and Stella is an accomplished enough interpreter so that we already know “it” means way before the words come out and spell it out for us. “Say It” is the kind of song that the late Rosemary Clooney once told me that she enjoyed because the word “love” isn’t heard until relatively late in the song – all the way at the bridge – and even then, it’s only referenced in an oblique, indirect manner: “when you say ‘I love you’ – the same old ‘I love you.’”

Stella is that rare artist – especially among those active in the millennial era – who understands that the song is communicating as much by what it doesn’t say as much as what it does – in effect, “Say It” puts its message across as much by not saying it as much as explicitly stating it. She inherently understands the essential balance between what should be said and what is best left unsaid.

In other words, she gets it, and she gets it to a degree that I have heard from few singers of any age. These texts are generally an intricate mixture of the very direct and the highly complex – you could say that they’re deceptively simple and at the same time say that they’re deceptively profound. Likewise, the music itself is, as “It’s Magic” composer Jule Styne famously said, a combination of a straightforward and memorable melody supported by rich and sophisticated harmonies.

“Say It” is probably my personal favorite cut here – I especially love the coda, wherein she teases the meaning out by playing with the words, repeating a phrase and drawing it out; Stella hesitates to label herself a “jazz singer,” but this is certainly a jazz-derived technique, making the performance sound spontaneous. She stretches out the coda like she was enjoying a romantic tryst, an intimate encounter that she wanted to sustain for as long as possible – like she didn’t want it to end. 

She reveals how the title may be intended ironically; saying it is one thing, but Stella shows us that she really means it and really feels it. The ending of “Alfie” – which Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote for a 1966 British comedy – follows a similar trajectory – she repeats the name “Alfie” four times, each with a different inflection – first asking, then pleading, then entreating, then, finally with a kind of satisfaction – as if Alfie himself finally realizes what it’s all about. (I know that I do.)

Producer Matt Pierson reports that he suggested “It’s Magic” – Doris Day’s breakthrough hit, introduced by her in the 1948 Romance on the High Seas – not only because “I’ve always really loved that song. But I also felt that, in a way, it doesn’t feel like a standard. It feels like a pop song from a later period.” The difference is subtle but crucial. I concur with their decision to make this the album title. This is Stella’s third project featuring the work of the legendary arranger-conductor-pianist Alan Broadbent, and it’s long been clear that their collaboration is indeed a kind of magic. Stella feels that even though the word “magic” itself can be a cliche when improperly used – as it usually is – nonetheless, it’s pretty much the only way to describe what Alan does. “He instantly captured everything I wanted – it’s like he was reading my mind. When I heard his arrangements, I didn’t want to make any changes, not even a single note.”

Stella points out that Alan’s intro to “As Time Goes By” references Max Steiner’s instrumental underscore to Casablanca, the 1942 movie that turned this then-forgotten 1931 show tune into one of the most familiar standards of all. She’s also understandably jazzed by the treatment of “Stairway to the Stars,” a pop song adopted from a light classical work titled “Park Avenue Fantasy,” which begins, she says, with a musical depiction of “a heart fluttering” and ends with a literal diatonic journey up a musical staircase – by the time it finishes, you really feel like you’ve ascended to someplace celestial.

“Stairway to the Stars,” incidentally, is one of three songs here – along with “Imagination” and “My Ideal” – recorded just with a string quartet – rather than the full string section. “Imagination” is about being overwhelmed just by the idea of someone not actually present; contrastingly, “The Touch of Your Lips” is about the corporal physical touch of a lover, who’s there in the real world, not merely the very thought of them. Stella renders them both in such a way that you can immediately feel the difference between.

Matt makes the point that all the songs here are well-known but not overly familiar, with the exception of “As Time Goes By” – which Stella has turned into one of her signature numbers. “I sing that at practically every show I’ve ever done,” she says. None of the songs here are closely identified with a single iconic performer, says Matt, “Everything feels fresh.”

He’s right about that. There’s nothing retro or overtly nostalgic here – this is anything but a throwback to an earlier era of pop music. Yes, the newest song here is about 60 years old – and one of the reasons they selected “Alfie” is because it’s from a comparatively more recent era – and yes, Stella certainly sounds like she’s been informed by the pantheon of great singers of the past: Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Lena Horne, and especially Judy Garland. And to some, the very act of arranging these melodies essentially as written with a lush string section such as this will suggest an exercise in nostalgia. 

Yet to those who really know this music, this project is anything but. For one thing, Alan’s arrangements employ harmonies that just weren’t being used 70 years ago – there were very far-sighted arranger-conductors then, like Nelson Riddle and Billy May – but there’s no mistaking these charts for earlier work. And more importantly, Stella sings all these songs like herself – the words may be fixed in stone, but the emotions and the stories are entirely her own. She brings herself to all of these lyrics, and, in the process, us as well. When she sings “Till There Was You” – which Meredith Willson originally wrote in 1950 and later retro-fitted it into his Tony winning hit, The Music Man (1957) – I swear that I could actually hear those bells on the hill and see those birds “winging” in the sky.

Yet while Stella is hardly trapped in the past, she doesn’t fall victim to the traps that bedevil too many aspiring singers of her own generation. She thankfully avoids the toxic influence of all those TV “talent” competitions, wherein singers are rewarded for eliminating narrative and substance in favor of belted vocal pyrotechnics and sheer volume. Instead, there’s a timeless quality to her work, on this album in particular; she is authentic and faithful to the traditions in which these songs have been heard for all these years, but with a personal charisma that transcends the generations and the reproductive medium itself; it doesn’t matter whether you’re listening via some futuristic social platform not even dreamed of in 2025 or if you’re playing the vinyl edition on a vintage turntable.

There’s a lot more to be said about the remarkable Ms. Cole and her music, but I wanted to end on a note of personal satisfaction. It turns out that Stella learned three of these songs, “Say It,” “Imagination,” and “Fools Rush In,” from an album collection of historic tracks by the combination of Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey recorded between 1940 and 1942. “That’s my go-to album for a certain kind of a light, happy feeling,” she tells me. “And I listen to it often, because whenever I hear it, I can literally feel my stress melting away.” No doubt that this album will serve that same purpose for future generations of listeners. 

This makes me especially proud because I worked on that album – back in the early CD era, when Frank himself was still with us but well before Stella Cole was born. Somehow I think that all of those giants – Sinatra, Dorsey, Loesser, and McHugh – would be glad to know that their conjoined legacy is in the best possible hands. I know that I am.

- Will Friedwald

 

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14.10.25          Hamburg        Nica Club

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