The oldest of identical triplets by minutes, the lead singer of the country trio Taylor Red outlived a three-month prognosis by a year and kept up CrossFit between chemotherapy treatments.
Nicole Taylor, 35, the lead singer of the Nashville-based trio Taylor Red, died Sept. 28, 2026, after a battle with breast cancer, and her sisters and bandmates, Nika Taylor and Natalie Taylor, announced her death Monday, Nov. 2.
The sisters waited more than a month to tell the millions of fans who follow the trio, then did it in a nearly 11-minute video titled “We Lost Our Triplet Sister Nicole,” posted to YouTube and TikTok. “This isn’t the video we thought we’d ever be making,” Natalie Taylor said at the start.
She added, “We thought she would be here sharing her story of earthly healing, but instead we’re here sharing her story of heavenly healing.” Both sisters told viewers they were still shocked and still processing, and that they were grateful their sister’s suffering had ended.
Nika Taylor said in the video, “We honestly thought she’d be healed here on earth, but now she’s healed in heaven.” The two sisters also posted a memorial to the band’s website, writing that Nicole led them, that she was their closest friend, that she will be greatly missed, and that their heartbreak is carried by the belief they will see her again in heaven.
A Lump Like a AAA Battery
Nicole Taylor found a lump in her breast in February 2022. It felt like “a little AAA battery,” she said in a 2023 interview. A mammogram and an exam followed, and doctors asked her to come back in six months.
The lump had “doubled or tripled in size” by the time she returned, she said in the 2023 interview, and a biopsy confirmed the diagnosis. Natalie Taylor recalled a nurse delivering the results by phone while the sisters were out in a public place, and she broke down in shock.
Nicole’s first response, her sisters said, was that God was going to use this for his glory. Doctors found the cancer was stage 3 and aggressive. No one in her family had had breast cancer, and she leaned on her faith and her doctors. Natalie said her sister told the family they were not going to spend the next stretch of their lives in dread.
She Outlived What the Doctors Predicted
Nicole kept doing CrossFit between chemotherapy treatments. She responded well, and after chemotherapy finished, doctors told her there was no evidence of disease. Then the cancer progressed to stage 4. Nika Taylor said the more serious diagnosis came around nine months after the initial one.
Treatment restarted after a serious operation, and doctors gave her three months. She lived another year. Natalie recounted her sister’s reply to that roughly three-month prognosis in the announcement video: “Everybody’s gonna face judgment, and I’m ready to.”
Her sisters said she held down two jobs, kept traveling, made time to enjoy herself and stayed hopeful as the illness advanced. “I definitely believe God has worked miracles through this,” she said in the 2023 interview.
The Prayer Team Her Aunt Started
Her aunt started a prayer team three days after Nicole learned she had cancer, and its members prayed for her daily at 3:18 p.m. The triplets were born March 18, 1991. The family has already held a private funeral service, and a page dedicated to Nicole lists the charities she loved for anyone who wants to give in her name.
From Red Roots to “Country Money”
The triplets, from Mississippi, started making music together in 2010 under the name Red Roots. Their debut album, “Red Roots,” was followed by “The Middle of Nowhere” in 2012 and “Triplicity” in 2014. They renamed themselves Taylor Red in 2018, eight years after they began, and eventually settled in Nashville, Tenn.
Their song “Country Money” went viral on social media in 2021, and the audience arrived in a rush after that. “TikTok has the ability to launch music unlike any other social media platform out there,” Nicole told People in a 2021 interview. Their YouTube channel now has 16.7 million subscribers, built on jokey videos and the chemistry of three women who look alike and sing together.
The trio also made a series of humorous commercials for the Sonic fast food chain and toured as an opening act for Charlie Daniels, Amy Grant and Josh Turner, among other Nashville-based performers. Nicole sang lead vocals while her sisters played banjo, guitar, fiddle and mandolin. All three appeared at “Opry 100: A Live Celebration” at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on March 19, 2025, and the sisters discussed their music, their creative process and how Nicole’s diagnosis had strengthened their bond on an episode of the “Hope Ignited” podcast.