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.
Too Young
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Too young to really be in love
They say that loves a word
A word we've only heard
But can't begin to know
The meaning of
And yet we're not too young to know This love will last though years may go
And then some day they may recall
We were not too young at all
And yet we're not too young to know
That this love will last though years may go
And then some day they may recall
We were not too young at all
The above lyrics are from Natalie Cole's song "Too Young" which was released in 1987. The song is about two people who are in love, but are being told that they are too young to know what love really is. The first verse talks about how others are saying that love is just a word and they don't really understand the meaning of it. However, the two lovers believe in their love and know that it will last through time.
The second verse repeats the same sentiment, but with more conviction. The lovers are not too young to know what they feel, and they are sure that their love will withstand the test of time. The final line is particularly poignant, suggesting that one day, those who doubted them will remember that their love was genuine and not simply a youthful infatuation.
Overall, the song speaks to the power of young love and the resilience of the human heart. It is a message that resonates with people of all ages and has made the song a classic in the decades since its release.
Line by Line Meaning
They tried to tell us we're too young
People have attempted to convince us that we lack the experience required to be truly in love
Too young to really be in love
Our age makes us incapable of genuinely experiencing love, according to societal standards
They say that loves a word
People claim that 'love' is merely a term, devoid of any real meaning or substance
A word we've only heard
We've never fully understood the significance of the word 'love', having only heard it used in passing
But can't begin to know
We have yet to gain the knowledge that would allow us to comprehend the true essence of 'love'
The meaning of
The concept of 'love' is not fully understood by us due to societal pressure and lack of experience
And yet we're not too young to know
Despite what others may believe, we are certain that we possess the understanding and capacity for true love
This love will last though years may go
Our love will endure the test of time, despite the inevitable passing of years
And then some day they may recall
At a future point in time, those who doubted our love may look back and remember
We were not too young at all
Our love was genuine and not hindered by our age, despite what others may have thought
Lyrics © MUSIC SALES CORPORATION, Kanjian Music
Written by: Sidney Lippman, Sylvia Dee
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind