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.
Starting Over Again
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You're gonna feel a love that's beautiful and new
This time I'll love you even better
Than I ever did before
And you'll be in my heart forever more
We, we're just too young to know
We fell in love and let it go
So hard to let the feeling die
I know how much I need you now
The time is turning back somehow
As soon as our hearts and souls unite
I know for sure we'll get the feeling right
And now we're starting over again
It's not the easiest thing to do
I'm feeling inside again
"Cause every time I look at you
I know we're starting over again
This time we'll love all the pain away
Welcome home my lover and friend
We are starting over, over again
If we never lived alone
Then we might have never known
All of the time we spent apart
All we did was break each other's hearts
And when I hold you in my arms I promise you
You're gonna feel a love that's beautiful and new
This time I'll love you even better
Than I ever did before
And you'll be in my heart forevermore
And now we're starting over again
It's not the easiest thing to do
I'm feeling inside again
"Cause every time I look at you
I know we're starting over again
This time we'll love all the pain away
Welcome home my lover and friend
We are starting over, over again
And now we're starting over again
This time we'll chase all the rain away
Welcome home my lover and friend
We are starting over, over again
We are starting over, over again
Starting Over Again is a song by Natalie Cole that talks about a couple who learn from their past mistakes and decide to start all over again. The lyrics express how they fell in love when they were young, but their relationship did not work out, and they ended up hurting each other. However, now that they have matured and gained a deeper understanding of what love means, they want to give their love a second chance.
The lyrics show that the couple acknowledges their past mistakes, and they aim to learn from them. They are willing to work hard to make their relationship work, promising each other that they will love better than they did before. The words "And when I hold you in my arms I promise you, you're gonna feel a love that's beautiful and new; this time I'll love you even better than I ever did before, and you'll be in my heart forevermore" express the sincerity of this newfound commitment.
The song ends on a positive note, with the couple looking forward to the future as they start over. They have a new perspective, having learned from their past mistakes, and they are determined to love each other better this time around. The words "We are starting over, over again, this time we'll chase all the rain away; welcome home my lover, and friend, we are starting over, over again" symbolize the new beginning that they are embarking on, as they chase away the pain of the past and build a new, stronger foundation of love.
Line by Line Meaning
And, when I hold you in my arms I promise you
I assure you that when I hug you, you will feel a new kind of love.
You're gonna feel a love that's beautiful and new
You will experience a new and wonderful type of love.
This time I'll love you even better
I will love you more than I have ever done before.
Than I ever did before
More than any other time in my love history with you.
And you'll be in my heart forever more
You will always and forever reside in my heart.
We, we're just too young to know
At the time we fell in love, we were too young to understand.
We fell in love and let it go
We fell in love and eventually broke up.
So easy to say the words goodbye
It was so simple to speak the words 'goodbye'.
So hard to let the feeling die
But it was so hard to let go of the feelings attached to our love.
I know how much I need you now
I now understand how badly I need you in my life.
The time is turning back somehow
Time seems to be moving back, bringing us closer together.
As soon as our hearts and souls unite
I am certain that as soon as our hearts and souls reunite, things will be right again.
I know for sure we'll get the feeling right
I am confident that we will get our love feelings right.
And now we're starting over again
We are beginning again.
It's not the easiest thing to do
Starting over is not an easy endeavour.
I'm feeling inside again
But I am feeling complete once again on the inside.
"Cause every time I look at you
Because every time I gaze into your eyes,
This time we'll love all the pain away
This time, our love will make us forget all our hurts.
Welcome home my lover and friend
I'm glad to have you back, my love and friend.
We are starting over, over again
We are rebooting our love afresh.
If we never lived alone
If we never spent time away from each other,
Then we might have never known
We may not have realized
All of the time we spent apart
But time spent away from each other was needed for our realization.
All we did was break each other's hearts
All we did was wound each other emotionally.
And when I hold you in my arms I promise you
Again, when I wrap my arms around you, I promise
This time I'll love you even better
That I will love you better than before, this time.
And you'll be in my heart forevermore
You will permanently stay in my heart, always.
This time we'll chase all the rain away
This time, we will erase all the tears and sadness from the past.
We are starting over, over again
We are starting afresh, again.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: GERRY GOFFIN, MICHAEL MASSER
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind