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.
Lush Life
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Those come what may places
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life
To get the feel of life
From jazz and cocktails.
The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces
With distant gay tracesThat used to be there you could see where they'd been washed away
By too many through the day
Twelve o'clock tales.
Then you came along with your siren of song
To tempt me to madness!
I thought for a while that your poignant smile was tinged with the sadness
Of a great love for me.
Ah yes! I was wrong
Again,
I was wrong.
Life is lonely again,
And only last year everything seemed so sure.
Now life is awful again,
A thoughtful of hearts could only be a bore.
A week in Paris will ease the bite of it,
All I care is to smile in spite of it.
I'll forget you, I will
While yet you are still burning inside my brain.
Romance is mush,
Stifling those who strive.
I'll live a lush life in some small dive
And there I'll be, while I rot
With the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too..
The lyrics to Natalie Cole's "Lush Life" convey a sense of loneliness and despair that is rooted in the singer's experiences as a regular at "gay places" where people "relax on the axis of the wheel of life" while listening to jazz and cocktails. These places are described as "come what may" spots with a transient feel that provide a brief respite from the monotony of everyday existence. The women in these places are also described in a melancholy tone, with "sad and sullen gray faces" that betray the weariness of their daily lives. Yet despite the bleakness of these settings, the singer is then beckoned by the "siren of song" who tempts him to madness with her "poignant smile."
However, this moment of hopefulness quickly dissipates, as the singer realizes that he was mistaken in thinking that this new love interest truly cared for him. The chorus takes on a more cynical tone as the singer resigns himself to a life of loneliness, insisting that he will "live a lush life in some small dive" and forget about this lost love. The final lines of the song suggest that the singer is not alone in his misery, as he acknowledges that there are "those whose lives are lonely, too."
Overall, the lyrics of "Lush Life" convey a sense of disillusionment with love and life in general, though they are also tinged with a certain nostalgia and even a hint of romance. The singer's experiences at the "very gay places" are depicted in vivid detail, with Cole's vocals lending a haunting quality to the mood of the song.
Line by Line Meaning
I used to visit all the very gay places
I frequented places that were carefree and full of life
Those come what may places
Places where anything can happen
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life
Where people unwind and enjoy the journey of life
To get the feel of life
To experience and appreciate life
From jazz and cocktails.
Through the enjoyment of jazz music and alcoholic beverages
The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces
The women I knew were unhappy and unfulfilled
With distant gay traces
With remnants of their once joyful past
That used to be there you could see where they'd been washed away
Their happiness has faded over time
By too many through the day
Due to the difficulties and hardships of everyday life
Twelve o'clock tales.
Their stories of loneliness and struggle
Then you came along with your siren of song
You appeared with your enchanting voice and presence
To tempt me to madness!
To lure me into a frenzy of emotions
I thought for a while that your poignant smile was tinged with the sadness
I believed your bittersweet smile was an indication of your love for me
Of a great love for me.
That you loved me deeply and passionately
Ah yes! I was wrong
But I was mistaken
Again,
Once more
I was wrong.
My assumption was incorrect
Life is lonely again,
I am alone once again
And only last year everything seemed so sure.
Just last year, I was confident in my future
Now life is awful again,
Everything is bleak again
A thoughtful of hearts could only be a bore.
Those who are considerate and caring find life dull and uninteresting
A week in Paris will ease the bite of it,
A trip to Paris will alleviate my pain
All I care is to smile in spite of it.
All I want is to pretend to be happy
I'll forget you, I will
I will try to forget you
While yet you are still burning inside my brain.
Even though you still consume my thoughts
Romance is mush,
Love is weak and insipid
Stifling those who strive.
Preventing those who seek love and passion from achieving it
I'll live a lush life in some small dive
I will indulge in a luxurious lifestyle in an insignificant place
And there I'll be, while I rot
I will remain there as my life inevitably fades away
With the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too.
Among those who share my fate of loneliness
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Reservoir Media Management, Inc.
Written by: Billy Strayhorn
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind