Review of “Snow!” by Stella Cole

Would that all Christmas albums and EPs were like this one — they have a tendency to overstay their welcome ‘roundabout track 7. Stella Cole’s Snow! (La Reserve) is just right in every respect, however. It’s a warm, creamy, and sweet mug of audio cocoa.

Cole is a young singer with considerable gifts who has reached a refreshingly enthusiastic new generation of listeners for the Great American Songbook on TikTok and YouTube. She’s been delivering on her early promise, and she’s recently released her eponymous first album.

Given her love for old musicals, it’s not surprising that Snow! features songs from Meet Me in St. Louis and White Christmas. The great Alan Broadbent plays piano on most tracks and did some of the lush, old-school string arrangements.

There are many glistening highlights. Cole freshens up the lyrics to “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” by sounding genuinely amused by them, like she’s hearing them for the first time. She rediscovers a dramatic Nancy Wilson song, “That’s What I Want for Christmas,” which she’s made popular on the streaming services. It has the same sentiment as Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” with the staggering advantage of not being Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

The biggest gift is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” the most beautiful of the Christmas standards. Cole rightly emphasizes the melancholy trying vainly to hide in the song, just as Judy Garland did (with real tears in her eyes) in Meet Me in St. Louis. Cole can be a bit breathy at the ends of phrases, cutting it pretty close to straight-up Garland impersonation rather than inspiration. But that isn’t necessarily a criticism.

Consider yourself lucky if you got some Cole in your stocking this year.

(Originally published on the Arts Fuse, January 1, 2025)