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.
Somewhere Along The Way
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Along the avenue
Our hearts were carefree and gay
How could I know I'd lose you
Somewhere along the way?
The friends we used to know
Would always smile "hello"
Then love slipped through our fingers
Somewhere along the way
I should forget
But with the loneliness of night I start remembering everything
You're gone and yet
There's still a feeling deep inside
That you will always be part of me
[Chorus]
So now I look for you
Along the avenue
And as I wander I pray
That some day soon I'll find you
Somewhere along the way
I should forget
But with the loneliness of night I start remembering everything
You're gone and yet
There's still a feeling deep inside
That you will always be part of me
[Chorus]
Somewhere along the way
is a song about lost love and the journey to find it again. The lyrics speak of walking with a lover along the avenue, enjoying carefree and happy moments, only to lose them at some point along the way. The singer reflects on their memories of the past, the friends they used to know, who would always smile and compliment their love. However, their love slipped through their fingers, and they struggle to come to terms with losing their soulmate.
The song is unique in the sense that it does not simply express sadness at the loss of love but acknowledges the lingering pain and love that remains long after separation. The lyrics "There's still a feeling deep inside/That you will always be part of me" illustrate the idea that though the relationship has ended, the memories and attachment lives on.
Overall, the song is a moving and relatable expression of the pangs of lost love, and the fear of never finding it again. It speaks to the longing shared by many people who have lost love and are still searching for it.
Line by Line Meaning
I used to walk with you
I used to walk beside you and share my world with you
Along the avenue
We used to stroll down the road enjoying our time together
Our hearts were carefree and gay
We loved each other without any worries or fears
How could I know I'd lose you
I never thought that one day I would lose you
Somewhere along the way?
At some point, we became distant without even realizing it
The friends we used to know
The people we used to hang out with
Would always smile 'hello'
They would greet us with warm and friendly smiles
No love like our love they'd say
They used to compliment our love for each other
Then love slipped through our fingers
Our love for each other vanished without us noticing it
Somewhere along the way
Our love went away without us realizing it
I should forget
I should let go and move on
But with the loneliness of night I start remembering everything
When I am alone at night, memories of you flood back into my mind
You're gone and yet
Even though you are gone
There's still a feeling deep inside
There is still a deep feeling of love inside me
That you will always be part of me
You will always be a part of me, no matter what has happened between us
So now I look for you
So now I search for you
Along the avenue
Where we used to walk together
And as I wander I pray
As I wander, I hope and pray to find you
That some day soon I'll find you
I hope to find you soon
Somewhere along the way
Where we lost our love for each other without realizing it
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Kurt Adams, Sammy Gallop
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind