Adorned in a glamorous white dress, with smoke swirling around her feet, Nicole Scherzinger stood centre stage at the Royal Variety Show in 2011. While most readers will know Nicole from her time in the iconic pop group ‘The Pussycat Dolls’, this time, the singer made an appearance to give a performance no one expected. Stepping into the role of Christine Daaé, she delivered the titular song from ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, joined by four legendary Phantoms from the musical’s history.

Nicole blew expectations out of the water with her performance of the musical theatre song. A complete departure from her well-known R&B style vocals, she embraced a whole new realm of vocal performance as she took on the operatic soprano style of the role. Her performance was met with thunderous applause, and the online video of the moment garnered a whopping 30M views online, with viewers leaving comments reading, “I had no idea that Nicole could sing like that. My mind is blown.”

Despite Nicole’s well-known reputation for her pop music career, readers may be surprised to find out that she actually got her start in singing through the world of musical theatre. At the age of just 14, she joined the Actors Theatre of Louisville and then went on to major in theatre arts at Wright State University. Despite everyone else’s surprise at Nicole’s musical theatre prowess, for her, the Royal Variety performance was a return to her artistic foundation.

Since then, Nicole has made a true return to the theatre, making her West End debut in 2014 as Grizabella in ‘Cats’. She returned once again in 2024 to perform in Sunset Boulevard. Now set to make a Broadway transfer with the show, Nicole marked her return to the US by amazing listeners with her musical theatre vocals once again when she performed a mind-blowing and moving rendition of ‘What I Did For Love’ from A Chorus Line at the 2024 Tony Awards.

While artists often build their reputations off of their success in a certain genre or niche, Nicole Scherzinger’s musical performances are a reminder to us all that skilled artists often have far more versatility than we may first expect. Showing her talent across not only pop and R&B but also musical theatre has allowed Nicole Scherzinger to share the true breadth of her talent, cementing her status as a multifaceted performer who is deserving of recognition far beyond her pop beginnings.