Paula Cole

pop rock · art pop · pop

Paula Cole is an American singer-songwriter and pianist, born April 5, 1968 in Rockport, Massachusetts, who studied jazz singing and improvisation at Berklee College of Music in Boston. She first drew wide attention as a vocalist on Peter Gabriel's Secret World tour of 1993 and 1994, stepping into the role Sinead O'Connor had filled, and appearing on the live album and concert film that came out of it. Her debut album Harbinger was released in 1994 on Imago Records and later reissued through Warner Bros. Its successor, This Fire, arrived in 1996 on Warner Bros., reached number 20 on the Billboard 200, and produced the top-ten single Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? along with I Don't Want to Wait, which reached a far larger audience as the theme to the television series Dawson's Creek. Cole won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1998 and that same year became the first woman nominated for Producer of the Year without a male collaborator. She played the 1996 prototype run of Lilith Fair and headlined the tour in 1997 and 1998. After Amen in 1999 she took an extended break from releasing records, returning with Courage in 2007 and Ithaca in 2010, both on Decca. Since 2013 she has issued her work on her own label, 675 Recordings: Raven in 2013, 7 in 2015, Ballads in 2017, Revolution in 2019, American Quilt in 2021 and Lo in 2024. Raven was made with musicians she had played with since she was nineteen, including co-producer and drummer Ben Wittman, guitarist Kevin Barry and bassist Tony Levin. Cole has been on the Berklee faculty since 2013, appeared in the 2025 documentary Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery, and has announced a 2026 tour marking the thirtieth anniversary of This Fire.

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