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.
Orange Colored Sky
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
When out of the orange colored sky,
Flash, bam, alacazam, Wonderful you came by.
.
I was humming a tune, drinking in sunshine,
When out of that orange colored view
Wham, bam, alacazam, I got a look at you.
. One look and I yelled timber
Watch out for flying glass.
Cause the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out
I went into a spin and I started to shout
I've been hit, This is it, this is it.
.
I was walking along minding my business
When love came and hit me in the eye
Flash, bam, alacazam,
Out of the orange colored sky
.
Well, one look and I yelled timber
Watch out for flying glass.
Cause the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out
I went into a spin and I started to shout
I've been hit, This is it, this is it.
.
I was walking along minding my business
When love came and hit me in the eye
Flash, bam, alacazam,
Out of the orange colored, purple stripes,
Pretty green polka-dot sky
Flash, bam, alacazam,
Went the sky
The lyrics to Natalie Cole's "Orange Colored Sky" tell the story of a chance encounter with love. The singer is walking along, minding her own business, when she sees someone who catches her eye. The imagery of the orange colored sky is used to set the scene and create a feeling of warmth and excitement. When the love interest appears, it's as if they came out of nowhere – "Flash, bam, alacazam, Wonderful you came by."
The second verse paints a picture of the singer's carefree state of mind before the encounter – "I was humming a tune, drinking in sunshine." But everything changes when they see the love interest – "Wham, bam, alacazam, I got a look at you." The sudden shift in tone is emphasized by the line "Watch out for flying glass," implying that the singer is so taken aback that they might accidentally break something.
The chorus repeats the idea that love hit the singer "out of the orange colored sky." The final line of the song adds more whimsy to the image, with the sky becoming "orange colored, purple stripes, Pretty green polka-dot sky." Overall, the lyrics use vivid imagery to convey the surprise and joy of falling in love unexpectedly.
Line by Line Meaning
I was walking along, minding my business,
I was casually going about my day, not expecting anything unusual to happen.
When out of the orange colored sky,
Suddenly, without warning, something surprising happened that caught my attention.
Flash, bam, alacazam, Wonderful you came by.
The surprise was a person coming into my life in a dazzling, captivating manner.
I was humming a tune, drinking in sunshine,
Before this happened, I was enjoying the simple pleasures of life and feeling content.
When out of that orange colored view
Out of nowhere, something caught my eye and made me take notice.
Wham, bam, alacazam, I got a look at you.
Upon seeing this person, I was immediately struck by their beauty and charm.
One look and I yelled timber
This person had such an impact on me that it felt like the world was on the verge of collapsing.
Watch out for flying glass.
The emotions were so intense that it felt like shattering glass.
Cause the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out
The shock of this person's appearance was so great that it felt like the world was turning upside down.
I went into a spin and I started to shout
The suddenness and intensity of the experience left me feeling dizzy and overwhelmed.
I've been hit, This is it, this is it.
The arrival of this person felt like a turning point in my life, a realization that this was something special.
When love came and hit me in the eye
This person represents the feeling of falling in love or being struck by the force of love.
Out of the orange colored sky
This person appeared suddenly and unexpectedly, like a bolt of lightning from a clear, calm sky.
Pretty green polka-dot sky
The sky became vivid and colorful, reflecting the newfound excitement in my life.
Went the sky
The whole world seemed to be transformed by this experience, like everything around me was dancing along with me.
Lyrics © AMY DEE MUSIC CORP.
Written by: Milton Delugg, William Stein
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind