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.
Since I Fell For You
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
When you just give love
Natalie:
And never get love
Reba:
You better let love be part
Natalie:
I know that it's so
And yeah I know
Reba:
I can't get you out of my heart
Natalie:
You, you, you, you, you, you
You make me leave my happy home
You took my love and now you're gone, gone, gone, gone, gone
Since I fell for you
Oh yeah
Reba:
Oh love
Natalie:
(Sing Reba)
Reba:
Brings such misery and pain
I guess I'll never
Oh I guess I'll never be the same
Since I fell for you
Natalie:
(I gotta say this right here)
Well, well it's too bad
Reba:
Oh it's too bad
Natalie:
Oh and It's too sad
Reba:
Oh It's too sad
Natalie:
But I'm in love, I'm in love with you
Natalie:
Oh oh, you love me
Reba:
Oh you loved me
Natalie:
And then you snubbed me
Reba:
You bad boy
Natalie:
Oh but what can I do
I'm still in love with you
Reba:
I, I guess I'll never see the light
Natalie:
Never gonna see the light
Reba:
I get the blues I get the blues most every night
Since I fell for you
Natalie:
Oh come on come on come on tell them about it
Reba:
Oh it's too bad
Natalie:
It's too bad
Reba:
And it's too sad
Natalie:
Oh it's much too sad
Reba:
Cause I'm still in love with you
Reba:
You loved me
Natalie:
Oh you love me
Reba:
Then you snubbed me
Natalie:
Oh then you snubbed me baby
Reba:
Oh what can I do
I'm still in love with you
Reba:
I, I guess I'll never see the light
Natalie:
Never, never, never, never
I get the blues most every single night
Since I, since I fell, since I fell for you
Both:
Since I fell for you
The song "Since I Fell For You" by Natalie Cole is a heart-wrenching ballad about the pain of unrequited love. The lyrics are a dialogue between two women, with one telling the other that if she keeps giving love without getting it in return, she'll be miserable. The other woman responds by saying she knows this is true, but she can't help being in love with someone who has taken her love and left her feeling lonely and heartbroken. They both then lament the fact that love has brought them so much pain and sadness.
The song's lyrics are a powerful expression of the pain and longing that often comes with unrequited love. The repetition of the phrase "since I fell for you" reinforces the idea that the person's life hasn't been the same since they fell in love with someone who didn't feel the same way. The use of dialogue between two women adds depth to the song and makes it more relatable to listeners who may have experienced similar situations in their own lives.
Line by Line Meaning
When you just give love
When you only give love
And never get love
But never receive love in return
You better let love be part
It's better to let love be present
I know that it's so
I understand this to be true
And yeah I know
I am fully aware of this fact
I can't get you out of my heart
My heart is consumed by thoughts of you
You make me leave my happy home
You caused me to abandon my place of happiness
You took my love and now you're gone, gone, gone, gone, gone
You received my love, but then left me abruptly
Since I fell for you
Since I began to love you
Oh love
This powerful emotion
Brings such misery and pain
Can bring about feelings of misery and pain
I guess I'll never
I suppose I will never
Oh I guess I'll never be the same
I will never be the same as I was before loving you
Well, well it's too bad
Unfortunately, it's regrettable
Oh it's too bad
It's a shame
Oh and It's too sad
And it's also very sad
But I'm in love, I'm in love with you
Despite this, I am still very much in love with you
Oh oh, you love me
You once loved me
Oh you loved me
You had feelings of love for me
And then you snubbed me
But then you disregarded my feelings
You bad boy
You are in the wrong for this
Oh but what can I do
But what options do I have?
I'm still in love with you
Despite everything, my love for you remains
I, I guess I'll never see the light
I suppose that I will never experience happiness
Never gonna see the light
I will never be happy
I get the blues I get the blues most every night
I frequently experience sadness and depression
Oh come on come on come on tell them about it
Let me speak on this matter
Oh it's too bad
It's unfortunate
It's too bad
It's regrettable
And it's too sad
It's also quite sorrowful
Cause I'm still in love with you
Because I have not stopped loving you
Then you snubbed me
You spurned me
Oh then you snubbed me baby
Oh, you rejected me, my love
Never, never, never, never
Absolutely not
Since I, since I fell, since I fell for you
Ever since loving you
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: BUDDY JOHNSON WOODROW
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind