Nicole Dollanganger

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Nicole Ann Bell (born September 8, 1991, in Scarborough, Toronto), better known by her stage name, Nicole Dollanganger, is a Canadian singer-songwriter and artist. She has been releasing music as Nicole Dollanganger since 2010. Her stage name is a reference to the Dollanganger Series of novels by V. C Andrews.

Early Life[]

Nicole Dollanganger was born Nicole Ann Bell in Scarborough, Toronto on September 8, 1991, to Wesley "Wes" Bell, an avid ventriloquist doll collector, and Susan "Susie" Bell, an avid early 1900's carnival doll collector.

Dollanganger mainly grew up in rural Whitchurch–Stouffville, Toronto; a small town known for its agriculture and annual strawberry festival. Over the years, however, she also bounced to and from Southwest Florida. In 2009, she graduated from Stouffville District Secondary School in Whitchurch-Stouffville. Before becoming a singer, Dollanganger stated that for a brief time she wanted to be a novelist.

After graduating, Dollanganger enrolled at Ryerson University where she studied film. "When I was in film school", Dollanganger said, "the first professor I met more or less immediately had a large talk with us about the weirdness in the West when it comes to portrayals of sex and violence in art. She believed that sex was a normal act and shouldn't involve shame, censoring, guilt, regret, etc., etc. and films that celebrated sexuality were fine. She was probably one of my first introductions to this idea that sexuality – and, in particular, female sexuality – could be explored without shame. That it could be honest and that honesty didn't make it vulgar. Up until I met her I had a very warped understanding of how sexual I was allowed to be – of what was appropriate for me. This embarrassment around it [is] completely unnecessary."

In 2012, right after releasing Curdled Milk, Dollanganger "had to be admitted to a hospital program" and went on bed rest for a year - dropping out of Ryerson University for the first time. She states, "I could probably count on my hands how many times I left the house throughout that year, actually". Dollanganger continues, "and after that period, I was a completely different person. Everything in my life had changed and I think for the first time I kind of came into myself". In 2013, she stated that she had beaten anorexia nervosa and anorexia athletica.

In the early months of 2014, Dollanganger dropped out of Ryerson University for the second and final time because she "was having some other problems" and had "since been making a living off of music/merch sales and working part-time".

Career[]

Dollanganger began posting music to Tumblr and MySpace in 2010. Until 2016, her music was strictly only available for purchase on Bandcamp; with the exception of a few homemade CD-Rs and cassettes. In May of 2014, she was signed to Yellow K Records; however, no projects were released through the label. In April of 2015, Dollanganger flew to LA to meet with Grimes and James Brooks when Natural Born Losers was in its demo stages. In August of 2015, Grimes publicly announced her creation of the Eerie Organization - a platform to "to fucking put [Natural Born Losers] out." Natural Born Losers was then the first album recorded outside of her home. In 2016, she signed with Run For Cover Records and reissued two of her albums, Ode To Dawn Wiener: Embarrassing Love Songs and Observatory Mansions on cassettes, CDs, and vinyl.

Controversies[]

Nicole was very active on the social networking site Tumblr from 2010 to 2016. She attracted quite a large fan base by posting her songs to her first tumblr blog, bugsinricepudding, and later her current blog, nicoledollanganger. In 2015 and 2016, users of the anonymous online discussion site lolcow.farm shared screenshots of picture that Nicole posted and reblogged on her Tumblr accounts before she started working on her sixth project. Much of the content from her old blog was "illegal" material involving children, as well as gore, violence, and other sensitive content. This led to Nicole briefly being "cancelled" by some fans and by the users of lolcow.farm, who often criticize Nicole, her fan base, her music, and her aesthetic. Nicole has also been accused of "romanticizing" various serial killers and shooters, specifically the Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, in her music, leading to more people considering her music content to be inappropriate. What with the popularity of Tumblr in the early and mid 2010's, and the fact that the Tumblr purge did not happen until 2019, meaning that child porn, gore, violence, and pedophilic content was largely unrestricted, there were many images on Nicole's blog that attracted attention, usually because it was considered distasteful and overly gory. In Nicole's defense, she was very ill when she posted those images, both physically and mentally, and although Nicole's fans understand why she was attracted to such content, many people do not.

Discography[]

Albums:

Curdled Milk (2012)
Flowers of Flesh and Blood (2012)
Ode To Dawn Wiener: Embarrassing Love Songs (2013)
Observatory Mansions (2014)
Natural Born Losers (2015)
Heart Shaped Bed (2018)
Married in Mount Airy (2023)

EPs:

Columbine (2013)
Empty Homes (2014)
Unreleased (2014)
BabyLand (2014)
Greta Gibson Forever (2015)
Covers (2016)
Cute Aggression (2017)

Singles:

Tours[]

See a full list of concert dates here.