Caro Emerald is the stage name of Caroline Esmeralda van der Leeuw, a Dutch singer from Amsterdam, born in 1981. She studies jazz singing at the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music and earns her degree in 2005.

Before her solo career, she gains experience as one of six singers in the close-harmony group Les Elles and as a vocalist in the Philharmonic Funk Foundation. Her first public attention comes through the debut solo single Back It Up, which begins as a demo recorded in 2007 and is later issued by Grandmono Records. The song is then taken into her live set, performed on Amsterdam television, and widely discussed by viewers and online audiences.

Recording career

Emerald’s first album, Deleted Scenes From the Cutting Room Floor, appears in 2010. The record combines ballroom jazz, tangos, mambo and contemporary production, with a sound shaped by 1940s and 1950s musical influences. It becomes the best-selling album in the Netherlands for more than 29 consecutive weeks, passing the previous record set by Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Her second single, A Night Like This, is released in 2009 and reaches number one in the Dutch charts. A later release from the same period is That Man. After success in the Netherlands, Back It Up is issued in several other countries, including Italy, France, Switzerland and Belgium.

Style and collaborators

Her work is associated with contemporary jazz, jazz, jazz pop and vocal jazz. The songs that lead to her album are developed with Dutch producers Jan van Wieringen and David Schreurs, and songwriter Vince Degiorgio, who has worked with acts including Atomic Kitten, A-Teens, N'Sync and Love Inc. The album is shaped in part by material written in Toronto and completed in Amsterdam.