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 Wish You Love
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
This is where our story ends
Never lovers, ever friends
Goodbye, let our hearts call it a day
But before you walk away
I sincerely want to say
I wish you bluebirds in the spring
And then a kiss, but more than this
I wish you love
And in July a lemonade
To cool you in some leafy glade
I wish you health
But more than wealth
I wish you love
My breaking heart and i agree
That you and i could never be
So with my best
My very best
I set you free
I wish you shelter from the storm
A cozy fire to keep you warm
But most of all when snowflakes fall
I wish you love
But most of all when snowflakes fall
I wish you love
I wish you love
I wish you love, love, love, love, love
I wish you love
Natalie Cole's song I Wish You Love is a bittersweet farewell to a relationship that never quite took off. It acknowledges the mutual understanding between two people as they part ways, acknowledging the good times, but ultimately accepting that they were never meant to be. The opening lines, "Goodbye, no use leading with our chins, This is where our story ends" reflect a sense of resignation which sets the tone for the rest of the song. The lyrics convey a sense of warmth and fondness, as Cole wishes her former lover bluebirds in the spring and a kiss that is more than just a kiss.
The imagery of the song is vivid, making it easy for the listener to picture the different scenes being described. From July lemonade and leafy glades to cozy fires to protect from the storm, the song is a litany of well wishes for the future. The deciding factor though, above all else, is the centrality of love. Even though it was not meant to be between them, Cole sincerely wishes her old flame the kind of love that can endure through time and hardship. The final lines of the song are a repetition of this sentiment, emphasizing that the most important thing in life is love, and that Cole truly wishes her ex-partner the best.
Line by Line Meaning
Goodbye, no use leading with our chins
We should face this situation directly without any unnecessary show of pride or force
This is where our story ends
Our relationship has come to an end
Never lovers, ever friends
We were never truly romantic partners, just friends
Goodbye, let our hearts call it a day
We should end this on a good note and call it a day
But before you walk away
Before you go
I sincerely want to say
I truly want to tell you
I wish you bluebirds in the spring
I hope you find happiness in simple and beautiful things
To give your heart a song to sing
To find joy and love that fills your heart with happiness
And then a kiss, but more than this
Aside from a kiss, I wish you something more
I wish you love
I hope you find true and genuine love in your future endeavors
And in July a lemonade
I hope you find something that refreshes you on hot days
To cool you in some leafy glade
Somewhere peaceful and comforting to you
I wish you health
I hope you stay physically healthy
But more than wealth
I hope you find wealth is not as important as the other things in life
I wish you love
Again, I wish for you to find true and genuine love in your future endeavours
My breaking heart and I agree
My heart is also broken and I am sad about our ending relationship
That you and I could never be
We were never meant to be together romantically
So with my best
I wish you the best
My very best
I wish you the absolute best
I set you free
I release you from our relationship to allow you to move on to better things
I wish you shelter from the storm
I hope you find protection and safety in hard times
A cozy fire to keep you warm
I hope you find comfort and warmth in hard times
But most of all when snowflakes fall
Above everything else
I wish you love
I truly and deeply hope that you find genuine love and happiness in your future
But most of all when snowflakes fall
Again, above everything else
I wish you love
I hope you find the love and happiness that you deserve
I wish you love
Again, I hope for your ultimate happiness and fulfillment in your future journey.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: Drew Barfield, Paul Young
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind