Paula Cole

Paula Cole first turned heads singing alongside Peter Gabriel on his Secret World Tour in 1993 and 1994, and her own records share his taste for big, dramatic gestures. Born in 1968, she has a voice that can go from a breathy whisper to a full-throated wail in a heartbeat, and she uses all of it.

Her debut, Harbinger, came out in 1994 and hardly stood a chance: her label, Imago, folded shortly after its release. Its "I Am So Ordinary" and "Happy Home" are intimate and searching, and deserved better. This Fire, in 1996, made up for it. "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" is a sly, sultry slow burn that went top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1997, and "I Don't Want to Wait" became the theme for Dawson's Creek. She toured with Lilith Fair from its first prototype run in 1996 and headlined in 1997 and 1998, and in 1998 she won the Grammy for Best New Artist and became the first woman nominated for Producer of the Year without a male co-producer.

Amen, in 1999, veered off in a new direction and lost some of her audience. Courage leaned toward jazz, Ithaca returned to her folk-rock sound, and Lo arrived in 2024. Gender stereotypes, the environment and the history of American slavery have all turned up in her songs, and since 2013 she has taught at Berklee College of Music.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.