A songwriter for the stars, for the stage, and a singer/songwriter in her own right, Carol Ades injects poignancy and broad-ranging melodies into tales of heartbreak and introspection. A onetime finalist on NBC’s The Voice, she dabbled in electro-pop before finding steady work as a songwriter in Los Angeles. She had co-written songs including the soundtrack entry “Invisible” by Zara Larsson and the Hot 100-charting “Past Life” by Trevor Daniel and Selena Gomez before making her singer/songwriter debut with the breakup-themed Through in 2021, an EP that bridged pop and indie pop/rock stylings. She returned with the EP Sadtown USA a year later and singles including “Hope Is a Scary Thing” and “Dreams” in 2024. In the meantime, she racked up dozens of songwriting credits, including tracks for Demi Lovato, Kesha, Benny Blanco, and Ava Max.

Born and raised in New Jersey and based in Los Angeles, Caroline Ades Pennell was a finalist on the fifth season of The Voice in 2013. That led to a contract with Nettwerk, and she released a series of EDM-influenced pop singles in the mid-2010s under her given name. It wasn’t long before she concentrated on writing songs for others, and by the end of the decade, she had co-written songs including Zara Larsson’s “Invisible” from the Klaus soundtrack and album tracks for Grace VanderWaal, X Lovers, and Astrid S.

Following a bad breakup, she started writing through her own story, taking influence from TV shows including Fleabag, related women authors, and indie cinema as well as music acts like MUNA and Phoebe Bridgers. The first product of this period was “Past Life,” a song that was ultimately recorded by Trevor Daniel and Selena Gomez (and credited to a team that included Pennell, Daniel, and Finneas O’Connell, among others). She was able to be more productive with the downtime that came with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and she released her first solo single, the self-depreciating “I Can’t Wait to Be British,” in June 2021. In October, the song was included on her debut EP, Through. That year also saw the world premiere of WILD: A Musical Becoming, a stage musical created by Tony-winning playwright V (The Vagina Monologues), Grammy-nominated songwriter Justin Tranter (Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande), and Carol, as Caroline Pennell. Idina Menzel played the lead character, a single mother trying to save the planet. Pennell also contributed heavily to Demi Lovato’s 2021 album Dancing with the Devil…The Art of Starting Over and worked on songs released by Ava Max, Benny Blanco, and others that year.

Back as Carol Ades, she issued her second EP, Sadtown USA, in late 2022. In 2023, she released singles including “Free” and earned credits on Kesha’s Gag Order and K.Flay’s Mono LPs. A year later, Ades collected hundreds of thousands of streams for her singles “Hope Is a Scary Thing” and the more pop-forward “Dreams.” – Biography by Marcy Donelson