Cynthia Basinet

Launching her career as a top model working with the world’s leading photographers in London, Milan and her longtime home base of Paris, Cynthia Basinet has become an oft-imitated major cultural influencer on the forefront of music, fashion/style, politics and social trends.
In 1997, while pursuing a career as a Brit-pop artist, she recorded a jazzy, soulful arrangement of the Eartha Kitt classic “Santa Baby” for her then-partner, legendary actor Jack Nicholson. Released independently in 2000 under the name C. Basinet on the cutting edge indie site mp3.com (where she was one of their first 100 artists), Cynthia’s version has been a perpetual hit.
The track has influenced countless other pop versions (including those of Gwen Stefani, Kylie Minogue and Trisha Yearwood); has appeared on the soundtrack to “Party Monster” and in “NCIS: Los Angeles”; and has racked up over 750,000 streams on Spotify and nearly 200,000 views on YouTube. The stylistic diversity of her later compilation albums The Collection and The Standard have earned her a loyal musical fan base, vast critical acclaim and the respect of numerous top pop, country and jazz artists. Her latest single is a fresh re-imagining of John Legend’s “All of Me” remixed by Klubjumpers, which has earned her dance/EDM fans as well.
A renowned social change activist, Cynthia is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee who has used her musical and pop culture notoriety as a platform to draw attention to important issues like self-determination, intellectual and copyright infringement, artists’ rights and royalties and human rights, with focuses on the environment, refugees, women, children, the arts, mental health and disabilities, addiction and recovery.
Cynthia’s activism has led to frequent trips to speak at the United Nations, where she has addressed committees to draw attention to numerous causes, including the plight of some 200,000 Sahrawi refugees living in the Western Sahara Desert. In a meeting of the United Nations Fourth Committee, she said that long before there was an Arab Spring there had been a “Saharan Fall,” where Saharans “lived bravely and were attacked and died in violence at the hands of Moroccan policies and perpetrated by their army.”
“I recorded ‘Santa Baby’ not as a gold-digger song, but as a hit a sister back at Christmas song, geared towards wanting to see a world that is more generous to deserving women,” Cynthia says. “I did it as a tribute to Eartha and put her in my video for the song. I knew I could not continue to promote her best known classic unless I followed in the path of activism she had ignited.”