Singer-Songwriter Shayna Steele Discusses Her Storied Music Career and Studying at Berklee Online with Friends Jordan Ballard and Kamilah Marshall

Shayna Steele is a professional singer-songwriter who got her start on Broadway in shows like Rent, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Hairspray. She’s sung backup for artists such as Bette Midler, Rihanna, and Kelly Clarkson, and she’s currently a solo artist with several symphony orchestras throughout North America. She’s in the process of making her fifth studio album with her husband and producer, David Cook, who also happens to be Taylor Swift’s longtime music director. Together, Shayna and David have a 12-year-old daughter. In this Q&A, she discusses her time on Broadway, how she earned her degree at Berklee Online with her friends Jordan Ballard and Kamilah Marshall, and what it was like to balance life as a mom, working singer-songwriter, and a student.


What was the first production you were ever in?

Shayna Steele: As a kid, the first production that I ever did was Oliver! and I had just moved to Mississippi from Germany, so that was my first play, and I got the bug. I was bitten then. I was nine and a half years old when I did that show. The character’s name was Bette, which was Oliver’s “girlfriend,” but I don’t know if that was a character that was written in or not, but they gave me a special part. I don’t know why; I guess I was a special kid.


Talk about the bug and how it manifested itself and where you went with it.

Shayna Steele: I caught the bug. Just to perform for my dad. My father was a great singer. He passed away six years ago. He taught me everything that I know. We used to sing together, and we did plays together. He actually brought me to New York when I was 15 years old. At that time, I thought I was ready for the big city, but I just hadn’t done anything else but perform my entire life.


Was Rent your first big role?

Shayna Steele: Rent was the first big show that I did after moving to New York. It was May of 1996, and the show had just opened on Broadway the previous month. Then I booked the show three months after moving to New York City. It was the show of the time. I think the week that I booked it, they had just performed at the DNC and they were on the cover of Time magazine, so it was kind of a big deal for a Mississippi girl.


Shayna Steele performing in the original cast of Rent.

Describe what that was like for you as it was starting to really happen. Did you see the play before you landed the role?

Shayna Steele: I did see the play. The auditions for Rent were really long. It was about three weeks of callbacks. I had four callbacks for the show, and by the time I was in the third callback, Bernie [Telsey] told his office in casting—he casts everything—he tells me, “We’re going to get you tickets for the show,” which at the time was impossible to get. So I was in the sound booth watching the show, and I just cried. I just knew I had to be in Rent. This was exactly where I needed to be. And then I booked it two weeks after that.


How did getting that part inform your identity?

Shayna Steele: I think that it was definitely the right time for me to move to New York. I think if I had moved there even a year prior, there was no place for someone that looked like me. I wasn’t five-foot seven or blond with legs to die for, a triple threat. I was just like this short, “We don’t know where she’s from.” She could play anything. She could be Jewish. She could be Latina. It was just such a great time to be in a musical that just transformed what Broadway looked like at the time. It set the stage for shows like Hamilton to happen. It was an iconic moment in Broadway history, and to be a part of that is it. Nothing is ever compared to that moment for me from any other show or performance I’ve done. I still have such strong relationships with everyone from Rent.

The original Broadway cast of Rent performing at the 1996 Tony Awards.

Is that where you met David?

Shayna Steele: No, I actually met my husband when I was doing Hairspray. Well, actually, it was a little bit before that. I met David two weeks after September 11, in a recording studio. He was doing a record, and I had become friends with Gavin Creel, who ended up going on to do fantastic things. And he unfortunately passed away in September, so I actually met David through Gavin.


What about Kamilah Marshall and Jordan Ballard? How did the three of you become such close friends?

Shayna Steele: Well, we all knew each other prior to coming together to work in the same atmosphere because Jordan came into Hairspray on Broadway about the time that I was leaving. So we were just like two passing ships. But Kamilah and I had known each other through the Rent connection.


Shayna Steele and Kamilah Marshall reprised their original Broadway roles as Dynomites in Hairspray Live in 2016.

Kamilah was actually my replacement in Rent, so it wasn’t until the Bette Midler show in Las Vegas that the three of us were actually working together. It was around that time that we just started to get together and just harmonize over everything. Like we would just make up silly harmonies. We were up until 2 or 3 in the morning with bottles of wine, singing things. 

That was the time when they were looking for a trio of singers to be in the Sex and the City 2 movie, but we were all in Vegas working with Bette. So I was like, “I think we, we all decided we should put it on tape and send it to Bernie Telsey’s office.” So we’re all Telsey kids, and we booked it from a taping.

Shayna Steele, Kamilah Marshall, and Jordan Ballard covering “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” on the Sex and the City 2 soundtrack.

The three of us, ever since that moment, we’ve just been stuck together, even though we’ve been spread all over the world. That’s how we became so close. 

I’m trying to understand the timeline of the friendship with you three, and wondering: Where does Taylor Swift come into the picture?

Shayna Steele: She doesn’t. It’s no surprise that Dave and I have mutual friends within that camp because the musical world is so small, especially the world of musicians and background singers. It’s a really tight-knit and very exclusive community. I had already been working and singing background, and Dave had been a musical director for Natasha Bedingfield before that.

He worked with NSYNC back in the day. So it wasn’t anything surprising that we all had some kind of connection to Taylor Swift’s camp. I’ve done some things, on and off the record with Taylor, throughout the years. But like I said, it’s the job. It’s the gig.


If we could talk just a little bit more about your friendship with Kamilah and Jordan, I need to hear the story about how the three of you came to study together at Berklee Online.

Shayna Steele: I was surprised. I really thought that I was the only person in my group of friends that was like, “I’m going to go back to school,” because it was something I’d always wanted to do. I started college when I graduated from high school in 1993 and because I’ve just been working, the pandemic was kind of a perfect time to finish what I started.

When I told Kamilah and then Jordan, they’re like, “Yeah, we’re going to do it too. Let’s all go together.” So Jordan was saying that we could try to have at least one course together per semester. We tried in the beginning.

Kamilah started to move really fast. Even though she was touring with Taylor, she was taking classes in the summer. For me, because I have a kid and her summers are off, I just really wanted to travel as a family, and I did not want to do school.

Our lives were going in different directions, and of the three of us, I was the only mom. So I’m mom-ing, I’m working, I’m doing school, plus my husband’s traveling and working. It was a lot to juggle.


I’d imagine the fact that it was all online was a necessity for you, especially in those circumstances.

Shayna Steele: Absolutely. I knew that the Berklee Online program was so phenomenal because you guys were online before everybody was online during the pandemic. So everything was set up and very well organized. It wasn’t like this new thing of, “Oh, we’re trying to figure out how internet college works.” Like, you guys had been doing this and I had spoken to the school for at least three or four years. I think, when I was touring with Rihanna, I reached out to the school to see what that looked like. To see “Am I able to do this and tour internationally?” And they were like, “Absolutely, this is totally possible.”


What’s the strangest place you ever did a Live Class from or did your homework from?

Shayna Steele: Oh gosh. There were so many strange places, probably from the back of a van going through Death Valley to Vegas and it was really hot. Or airplanes. I have done homework in backstage moments. I’ve been onstage when symphony rehearsals are happening, in between songs, in the lobby, or in the audience. I’d go into the lobby to sing something for a class.


What are some things that you took from classes and directly applied to your profession?

Shayna Steele: I would say from a marketing standpoint, like setting up my website, to work more efficiently, and to make my team work better together and being organized like I am—I am not a super organized person—and going to school helped me recognize that it was okay to ask for help, that you don’t have to do everything when you are the artist, or you are the brand. There are people who can do some things for your business better than you can.

Also, going to school gave me permission to mess up when it came to being creative, whether it was writing songs or doing the website, like there was someone there just kind of guiding me through the different processes of songwriting or chord progressions.

I could do them wrong and nobody was judging me for it. There was no end result, like “we need to record this and someone’s paying you to do this.” It just gave me permission to be messy.


Did you make any other connections with other classmates or instructors?

Shayna Steele: I know some people who are teaching here or who have taught here. I know Alison Wedding used to teach here, Kat Reinhert, who is a professor here, and Ledisi for years. Mark Zaleski is definitely a professor that I’ve kept in touch with. Chandler Coyle is someone that I’ve kept in touch with. He actually helped me. I had a few meetings with him to do some marketing for my last album, and he gave me great advice, so I’ve kept in touch with all of them. And obviously, my advisor, who I just have the biggest heart for, Patrick Waltman, he’s the best. I can’t wait to meet him.


How about any classmates that you might see collaborating with in any capacity?

Shayna Steele: No, that was a little bit harder. Going to the live classes was difficult for me because sometimes they were happening at night, and that’s the only time I have to be with my kid. So I was watching classes after the fact, so I didn’t really have a lot of one-on-one. I did learn that I am very grateful for engineers and people who mix and master albums, but I don’t ever want to do that.


So let’s talk a little bit about engineering and production. On your latest album, the style is all so personalized to you.

Shayna Steele: David produced my last record, Gold Dust, and he produced the album prior to that. The other albums before that, we had other producers, but as time went on, it was my collaboration with David that just made sense. It made sense for him to continue to produce everything for me. We are a great team. We really are.


Shayna Steele’s 2023 album Gold Dust takes its title from her fiery cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman.”

Now that you have the degree, what are you planning on doing with it? What’s next for you?

Shayna Steele: I’m doing another album, so I’m looking forward to utilizing the things that I’ve learned in marketing and in capstone. What I’ve learned in capstone, I’m solely putting that into my fifth studio album. So that’s why I’ll be spending the next year and a half doing the arrangements. That’s going to be a large ensemble album, which I’ve never done before, and I’m going to have two producers on that, including Grammy-nominated Alan Ferber. So Alan and David are going to produce the album together.


What was your favorite course?

Shayna Steele: My favorite course at Berklee was the music marketing class with Chandler, and the theory courses. Those were the two classes where I was at every live class. I dropped everything. I just wanted to hear them talk. I love the way that they taught the class. It made sense to me. I also liked the math class because it was so hard. I was terrified that if I didn’t go to the live class I was going to fail.


Why was it so important for you to get the degree, rather than just take a handful of courses?

Shayna Steele: One of the questions I get asked all the time, especially by my peers, is “Why are you going to music school when you’re already doing what people go to music school to do?” And I have always believed that I had holes in my musical education, even holes that I didn’t think that I needed.

When I started to learn different things, especially about marketing or just how to run my business more efficiently or to run my brand (which I am the brand). I didn’t think I could learn anymore. I really thought I could go in there and just be like, “Oh, this is old hat, I could probably teach them a thing or two,” but that just wasn’t the case. I learned things beyond what I ever thought I could learn as a working musician.


 Published November 3, 2025

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