Cole was exposed to the greats of jazz, soul and blues at an early age and began performing at the age of 11. Her debut album in 1975, Inseparable, won her immediate praise, with the smash single This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) (#1 R&B, #6 Pop) winning her a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female, a category that had been monopolized by Aretha Franklin, since its inception in 1967. She also was named the Grammys' Best New Artist of 1975. She attended the Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield, MA.
More hits followed through 1980, including her biggest Pop hit, 1977's I've Got Love On My Mind, as well as Sophisticated Lady (She's A Different Lady) (1976), Our Love (1978), and Someone That I Used To Love (1980). "I've Got Love On My Mind" and "Our Love" both earned certifications as Gold singles. But then her career hit a snag in the early 1980s due to a severe drug problem. By 1985, Natalie was clean, sober, and in fine voice, and ready to begin her comeback in earnest with the album Dangerous, released on the Modern label.
In 1987, she released Everlasting (on EMI Manhattan) which sold over 2 million copies in the U.S., and won Cole a Soul Train Award for Female Single of the Year for the #1 R&B ballad I Live for Your Love. This album was the one that put Natalie Cole firmly back in the spotlight, yielding three major hit singles: Jump Start, "I Live For Your Love" (#2 AC and #13 Pop as well as #1 R&B), and a successful remake of Bruce Springsteen's Pink Cadillac (#5 Pop, #16 AC, and #1 Dance). The album also included a taste of things to come in her career with a remake of one of her father's signature hits, "When I Fall In Love," which did moderately well on the AC chart. In 1989, the aptly-titled Good To Be Back gave her another across-the-board smash with "Miss You Like Crazy" (#1 both R&B and AC, and #7 Pop).
However, it was her 1991 album, Unforgettable... with Love, featuring her own arrangements of her father's greatest hits, that gave her the most success. Ironically, when Natalie began her career, she was determined not to capitalize on her father's name and wanted to forge her own identity by going after the soul market in earnest. For many years, she also found the prospect of recording her late father's songs too painful on a personal level. But Unforgettable... With Love certainly paid off. The set sold over 5 million copies in the United States alone, and won Cole several Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. The album featured a duet, the title track, with her father, created by splicing a recording of his vocals into the track. As a single, it reached #14 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 chart, and went gold. The one sour spot in the album's success was that it strained Natalie's already-tumultuous relationship with her mother, Maria, who said in interviews at the time that she couldn't listen to the album or attend any of her daughter's concerts because she felt that the music really belonged to her late husband.
Natalie has released several more albums of pop standards in the years since; as a result of appealing to the "adult standards" audience, she has made only occasional forays onto the pop singles charts in that time (for example, "A Smile Like Yours," #8 AC and #84 Pop in 1997), although her albums still sell well. Her 1999 album Snowfall On The Sahara marked a return to the easy adult-contemporary soul that categorized her late-1980s hits, but for 2002's critically-praised Ask A Woman Who Knows, she turned more to the jazz side of the spectrum, covering songs made famous by Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Sarah Vaughan.
Battle With Drugs
In 2000, Cole released an autobiography, Angel on my Shoulder, which described her battle with drugs during much of her life. In the book, Cole admitted to using LSD, heroin and crack cocaine. Cole said she began experimenting with drugs while attending the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and was arrested in Toronto, Canada for possession of heroin in 1975. Cole continued to spiral out of control - including an incident in which her young son Robert nearly drowned in the family swimming pool while she and her first husband, the late Reverend Marvin Yancy were on a drug binge - until she entered rehab in 1983.
In concert with the release of the book, her autobiography was turned into a made-for-TV movie, The Natalie Cole Story, which aired December 10, 2000 on NBC.
Natalie has been married three times and has a son Robert Yancy (by Marvin Yancy), born in 1977. She later married former Rufus drummer Andre Fischer, who co-produced the Grammy Award-winning Unforgettable... With Love, Natalie's love offering featuring songs made famous by her father, including a faux-duet between her and her father.
The marriage to Fischer ended in divorce a few years later, amidst rumors of domestic verbal and physical abuse.
It has also been reported that Natalie has recovered from a life-threatening hepatitis illness (most likely the cause of her years of drug abuse) by having a liver transplant.
Miss Cole went on to release more albums after Unforgettable...With Love, with most of them featuring jazz-oriented standard songs or pop-song remakes. None of the albums were nearly as successful as Unforgettable...With Love.
As of 2013, Natalie Cole spent most of her professional time covering the concert circuit entertaining audiences around the world with her hits.
On December 31, 2015, Natalie Cole died from congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She was aged 65.
I'm Catching Hell
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I never realized, oh Lord, that you mean so much to me
I'm catching hell living here alone
I want you to come back, baby
Come back 'cause here's where you belong, oh yeah
If I could replay
If I could replay that whole scene again, oh wellYou know that I would never, never say it again
That our love, our love is at its end
And oh, you know that I would kind of ease on back, yes I would
And let confusion pass on by
I took a fool's way out, oh yeah
Without one good reason why
I'm catching hell, catching hell
Lord I'm living, living, living here alone, alone, lone
To tell you the truth, to tell you the truth
I'm going out of my mind, yeah
Oh, do you hear me tonight
I don't have too much more to say except
Somebody told me that if you've got something
That's good to you and you don't use it, you might lose it
So girls hold on to your good thing and don't let go
Do you hear me tonight
It's so sad living alone, living alone
Hold on to your good thing, hold on
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Oh, oh, oh, Lordy, Lordy do you know what it's like
Catching hell
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no
The lyrics to Natalie Cole's song "I'm Catching Hell" express the sadness and loneliness one feels after losing a loved one. The singer of the song reveals that they never realized how important their partner was to them until they were gone. Without them, the singer is "catching hell" and going out of their mind. They long for their partner to come back because they belong together. If they could replay the end of their relationship, they would have done things differently and never let their love come to an end. The singer advises others to hold on to their good thing and not let go, as losing it would cause them great pain and loneliness.
Line by Line Meaning
I'm catching hell living here alone
Living alone is extremely difficult and unpleasant for me.
I never realized, oh Lord, that you mean so much to me
I did not fully comprehend the depth of my love for you until you were gone.
I want you to come back, baby
Come back 'cause here's where you belong, oh yeah
I deeply desire for you to return to me because being together is where we belong.
If I could replay that whole scene again, oh well
You know that I would never, never say it again
That our love, our love is at its end
If I could go back and change what I said, I would. It was a mistake to speak those words because it led to the end of our relationship.
And oh, you know that I would kind of ease on back, yes I would
And let confusion pass on by
I took a fool's way out, oh yeah
Without one good reason why
If I could do things differently, I would not have jump to conclusions and left you without giving you a fair chance to explain. My actions were foolish and unwarranted.
I'm going out of my mind, yeah
I am going crazy from the agony of being without you.
Oh, do you hear me tonight
It's so sad living alone, living alone
Hold on to your good thing, hold on
I am pleading with you to listen and understand my pain. Living alone is sad and I hope you hold on to what you have before it is too late.
Oh, oh, oh, Lordy, Lordy do you know what it's like
Catching hell
The experience of living without you is like being in a state of constant torment and agony.
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: CHUCK JACKSON, MARVIN YANCY
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind