Cole, Paula

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PAULA COLE

Born: Rockport, Massachusetts, 5 April 1968

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: This Fire (1996)

Hit songs since 1990: "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" "I Don't Want to Wait," "Me"

The classically trained multi-instrumentalist Paula Cole is perhaps best known for writing the song "I Don't Want to Wait," which became the theme song for the popular Warner Bros. network teen soap opera Dawson's Creek.

Cole had a somewhat unconventional childhood; her mother was a visual artist and her father an entomologist who also played bass in a polka band. She officially started her musical career in Boston at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, studying voice. Initially, she thought she would become a jazz singer, but she began writing songs. After graduating, she moved to San Francisco and eventually played her songs for Terry Ellis, the president of the now-defunct Imago Records. He quickly signed her, passed on her album to Peter Gabriel, and she was asked to tour with him in 1992–1993 in support of his album Us.

After the release of her thoughtful, introspective debut album Harbinger (1994), which received some airplay on the country's Adult Album Alternative stations, the piano-playing former choirgirl Paula Cole broke through with the multiplatinum album This Fire (1996), which earned her seven Grammy nominations, including the distinctive Producer of the Year. It was the first time a woman received that honor in Grammy Award history. Cole also won a Grammy for Best New Artist, disproving the dreaded sophomore slump. "I Don't Want to Wait," a single from the album, was picked up as the theme song for Dawson's Creek shortly after its release. The New York Times called her "a rising talent with tremendous artistic potential," while Entertainment Weekly praised Cole as "a feisty poet with a soaring voice and a funky groove."

Sultry, feminist, and dramatic, with a powerful voice that can climb from a whisper to a near scream, Cole exercises the full range of the piano's capabilities, creating percussive, explosive songs on This Fire. Cole's sense of freedom and spirituality pervades her songs. In the personal anthem "Me," she admits that she is her own worst enemy, a sentiment that many young women can relate to, and sings, "It's me who is too weak / And me who is too shy / To ask for the thing I love." Lyrics such as those earned her a spot on the groundbreaking Lilith Fair tour in the mid-1990s.

The release of her third album, Amen (1999), which she also produced, suffered from overwrought, didactic songwriting that was not nearly as commercially successful and did not come close to the overwhelming beauty of This Fire.

Paula Cole is an unusual talent, with an uncompromising streak, a powerful voice, and a maestrolike command of the piano.