When singer-songwriter Kole (born Nicole Cohen) was 17 years old, she took a class called Songwriters on Songwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles. One week, songwriter-producer Rick Nowels (Sia, Madonna) visited as a guest speaker and Kole, then a second-year ethnomusicology student, volunteered to sing Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” for him. After class, her professor offered to connect her with an industry veteran who later became Kole’s first manager.