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.
Paper Moon
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
When I'm away from you
Out of your embrace
The world's a temporary parking place
A bubble for a minute
You smile, the bubble has a rainbow in it
Say, it's only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade
It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Without your loveIt's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade
It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
The lyrics in Natalie Cole's song "Paper Moon" speak to the power of love and how it can transform one's perceived reality. The singer opens by stating that life feels unreal and temporary without her lover's presence. Their love is what gives her world meaning and permanence. She compares life without him to a "temporary parking place" and likens love to a bubble with a rainbow, delicate and fleeting but beautiful nonetheless.
The next verse paints a similar picture using the metaphor of a painting. The world is nothing more than a cardboard sea and muslin tree hanging in the sky, but it becomes real and authentic when shared with someone who believes in it. Their love is what makes the world come alive, full of color and meaning. Without it, life is dull and unremarkable, nothing more than a cheap penny arcade exhibition.
The final verse brings the imagery full circle, with the singer reiterating that without her lover's love, life is nothing more than a phony carnival show. But, with his love, it becomes magical and real. The culmination of this message is the refrain - that life is a paper moon, a mere shadow of what could be, but with the power of love, it can become so much more.
Line by Line Meaning
I never feel a thing is real
The singer only feels content when she is with her loved one.
When I'm away from you
When she is not with her loved one, she feels a disconnect from the world.
Out of your embrace
The singer feels lost and incomplete when she is not physically with her loved one.
The world's a temporary parking place
Without her loved one, she sees the world as a fleeting and unimportant place.
A bubble for a minute
The happiness the artist feels in moments without her loved one is temporary, like a bubble.
You smile, the bubble has a rainbow in it
The only time the singer feels joy without her loved one is when she thinks about their happy moments.
Say, it's only a paper moon
The singer knows that the happiness she feels without her loved one is not real or substantial.
Sailing over a cardboard sea
The happiness she feels without her loved one is fragile and temporary, like a flimsy paper moon over a fake sea.
But it wouldn't be make-believe
The artist knows that her happiness would not be fake if her loved one was with her.
If you believed in me
If her loved one trusted and loved her, the happiness she felt would be real.
Without your love
The singer cannot find true happiness without her loved one.
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without her loved one, life is chaotic and disorganized, like a loud and confusing parade.
It's a melody played in a penny arcade
The only sound she hears without her loved one is a cheap, tinny melody played on a sad arcade machine.
It's a Barnum and Bailey world
The world without her loved one is fake and hollow, like a circus show.
Just as phony as it can be
The singer feels the world without her loved one is completely artificial.
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, S.A. MUSIC, Universal Music Publishing Group, CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, Royalty Network, Reservoir Media Management, Inc., Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Billy Rose, E. Y. Harburg, Harold Arlen
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind