About Paula Cole
Paula Dorothy Cole is an American singer-songwriter and producer. After gaining attention for her performances as a vocalist on Peter Gabriel's 1993–1994 Secret World Tour, she released her first album, Harbinger, which suffered from a lack of promotion when the label, Imago Records, folded shortly after its release. Her second album, This Fire , brought her worldwide acclaim, peaking at number 20 on the Billboard 200 album chart and producing two hit singles, the triple-Grammy nominated "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?", which reached the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1997, and "I Don't Want to Wait", which was used as the theme song of the television show Dawson's Creek. Cole was a featured performer in the 1996 prototype mini-tour for Lilith Fair, and also was a headliner for Lilith Fair in 1997 and 1998. She won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1998, and also became the first woman ever to be nominated for "Producer of the Year" in her own right in that same year.
Her third album, 1999's Amen, marked a major stylistic departure for Cole, and this alienated many of her former fans; the album sales were disappointing compared to the multi-Platinum sales of her prior effort. She has since released several more albums, including the jazz-influenced Courage and Ithaca , which marked a return to her 1990s folk-rock sound. Her most recent release was titled American Quilt, and came out in May 2021. Cole's music sometimes addresses social issues, such as gender stereotypes, environmental issues, the history of slavery in the United States, and the Iraq war. Besides recording and performing, Cole has also served on the faculty at Berklee College of Music since 2013.
Cole was raised in Rockport, Massachusetts. Her mother, Stephanie Cole, a mixed media artist, was an elementary school art teacher; her father, Jim Cole, was a professor of biology and ecology at Salem State College and played bass in the polka band "Johnny Prytko and the Connecticut Hi-Tones". Her older sister Irene played piano.
She attended Rockport High School where she was president of her senior class and performed in school theatrical productions such as South Pacific. Cole then attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she studied jazz singing and improvisation with Bob Stoloff. She sang jazz standards at lounges and nightclubs. One of the school projects was with Vox One, a chorus group at Berklee that later turned to pro as well. She was offered a record deal by the jazz label GRP Records, but decided to turn it down.
After graduating Berklee, she moved to San Francisco and began working on song ideas. She lived with three roommates and ate meagerly, building up her home studio and writing down song ideas including one that later became "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" Impressing label president Terry Ellis with her demo performances, she signed with his Imago Records in 1992, and was coached by veteran artist's manager John Carter on the album project that would become Harbinger.
Cole got her first big professional break when she was invited to perform on Peter Gabriel's 1993–94 Secret World Tour. To replace Sinéad O'Connor who left the tour, Gabriel sought Cole on the recommendation of his studio engineer Kevin Killen. Gabriel left an answering machine message for her at her apartment in San Francisco, and she immediately flew to Mannheim, Germany, for her only rehearsal with Gabriel, shortly before performing in front of 16,000 people.
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