Singer and songwriter Caroline Kole left behind a promising career as a teen country act to pursue exuberant dance-pop, putting a vulnerable spin on the format with her eponymous EP in 2018. The transition proved to be a successful one when she made her Billboard Dance chart debut with a mix of "Right Now" by production duo VAVO the same year. Born Caroline Kudelko in Houston, Texas, Caroline Kole spent much of her early childhood in Clearwater, Florida, where she began singing at local beach establishments at the age of eight. After finishing the seventh grade, the young country singer/guitarist and her family relocated to Nashville, and she booked a slot at the 2012 CMA Music Festival at age 14. A year later, a song she wrote about the Clearwater-based dolphin from the Dolphin Tale movies appeared in the documentary Winter, the Dolphin That Can. By the age of 16, Kole had toured with Reba McEntire and opened shows for Blake Shelton and Alan Jackson, among other marquee artists. She contributed backing vocals to a song on McEntire's 2015 album, Love Somebody, and Starstruck Records released a self-titled full-length set of laid-back country-pop by Kole in 2016. Rebranding herself as a pop singer, she issued an EP, also on Starstruck and also titled Caroline Kole, in 2018. Majoring in Entertainment Industry Studies at Belmont University at the time, she hit the Top 40 of Billboard's Dance chart care of VAVO's remix of her song "Right Now." She followed it up with the Starstruck EPs Only Slightly Emotional and Freaking Out!, both issued in 2019. ~ Marcy Donelson