From running track to music tracks – the County’s Cole Norton still a rising star

By Olivia Timm

Cole Norton

His first notable successes were on the running track, and now, the County’s Cole Norton has turned up the volume on a promising music career.

Tuesday, his song ‘Perfect’ played on Dallas radio station New Country 96.3 – Norton’s first radio appearance.

“Now that my song will be on the radio for the next 10 weeks, I will be looking to do live performances at the radio stations who play me while I am on the road in July,” he said. “I will get reports every Wednesday on how my song is doing on the Billboard charts and how much each radio station has played my song. It will be interesting to see the progress.”

Last week he told his Twitter followers he woke up to a missed call from what he thought was a telemarketer in California. Instead, he wrote, it was a radio promotion company telling him they wanted to put his song on radio stations all over the country including Sirius XM.

“It was definitely a surprise that my song was wanted for the radio. I was aware that there was a radio promoter wanting my song for a while now, but then I randomly got a call from him in California and realized that it was really happening.”

Cole with his ‘red ticket’ call back for The Voice auditions

In February, he got a call-back for television’s The Voice where he had auditioned singing ‘Perfect’ and a cover of ‘Mercy’ by Shawn Mendes. He didn’t make the show but was “thankful for the journey music is taken me on.”

“One day I woke up and saw that ‘Perfect’ got 6,000 streams in 24 hours on Spotify. All of a sudden my account was getting thousands of streams daily – and still does.”

Since, his music now appears on Spotify and Apple Music, and he almost had the chance to open for Post Malone at his university in Oklahoma.

“I got to sing in front of 2,000 people when I was supposed to be opening for American rapper Post Malone. Despite him not showing up, it was an amazing experience for me to sing in front of that many people and hear them singing along.”

So far, Norton has performed at three shows and now has a permanent gig at the Urban Crust restaurant in Texas.

“The people there really love my sound and they have told me their customers give great reviews about my music,” he said.

Picton’s Cole Norton

Norton chose Oklahoma State University as a star of 60, 100 and 200-metre track – competing against some of the top athletes in the country. But as he enters his fourth year studying business and marketing, he says he now wants to focus most of his time on music.

“My journey with track and field actually just came to an end this year as I finished my third year of school. I would only have one year left of track anyway. I decided that it was time to focus on my new passion of music, and since track occupied my time every day, it gave me little-to-no time to focus on music,” he said.

The lessons learned as a track star, are helping him in his music career.

“My pursuit of becoming a college athlete in high school was something that taught me true perseverance and the idea of never giving up during times where things look as if though they will not work out,” said Norton. “I have faced hard times both in track, and now in music, but I have always stuck it out.”

Norton grew up in Montreal, Quebec and moved to Picton with his mom, dad, and two siblings when he was 10. He said he’s been taking piano lessons since he was six, but that he didn’t take his music skills seriously until he was 14.

“My family has been super supportive, especially my mom. She is the one who convinced me to do music when I really never wanted to. Now I am so thankful that she kept me in it, because it is opening so many doors. Everyone in my family keeps up with my music and always gives me great feedback. They are truly my biggest support team.”

Norton will be busy this summer balancing his time as an ambassador for swimwear company Sun Britches while making music at the same time.

“My biggest goal is definitely to become a full-time musician and hopefully be able to compete among the best artists out there. That may or may not be a long time down the road because it takes a lot of hard work.”

He has released several songs on YouTube, Spotify and with Apple Music, including ‘Wrote a Song About You’, ‘Location’, ‘Just Go’, ‘Perfect’ and ‘Objective Opinion’ which he recorded with musician and school mate Eden Skye.

“I want people to know that I am doing my best to create a unique sound as well as unique music so that I can make a name for myself rather than being compared to other musicians.”

For Cole, that would be ‘Perfect’.

Click here to hear Cole Norton on YouTube

Cole Norton and Eden Skye collaborate in a  duet released on YouTube last week.

perfect