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.
Very Thought of You
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And I forget to do
The little ordinary things
That everyone ought to do
I'm living in a kind of daydream
I'm happy as a king
And foolish though it may seem
The mere idea of you
The longing here for you
You'll never know how slow the moments go
‘Til I'm near to you
I see your face in every flower
Your eyes in stars above
It's just the thought of you
The very thought of you
My love
The mere idea of you
The longing here for you
You'll never know how slow the moments go
‘Til I'm near to you
I see your face in every flower
Your eyes in stars above
It's just the thought of you
The very thought of you
My love
In Natalie Cole's rendition of "The Very Thought of You," the lyrics express the overwhelming presence of a loved one. The song begins by saying that the very thought of this person consumes the singer's mind to the point where she forgets smaller, everyday activities. The listener can implies that the singer is completely taken by thoughts of this person and fully immersed in imagination. The second verse further elaborates on the effect these thoughts have on the singer, describing her as living in a "daydream" where she is happy because of these thoughts. Despite this, the singer acknowledges that to others, she may seem "foolish" because of how consumed she is by these thoughts, but for her, these thoughts are "everything."
Line by Line Meaning
The very thought of you
Thinking of you makes me forget about mundane tasks and problems.
And I forget to do
I get so caught up in thoughts of you that I neglect the little things I should be doing.
The little ordinary things
The everyday tasks and chores that need to be done.
That everyone ought to do
The responsibilities that are expected of everyone.
I'm living in a kind of daydream
Thoughts of you make me feel like I'm in a dream world.
I'm happy as a king
The happiness I feel is akin to that of royalty.
And foolish though it may seem
Others may see my infatuation as foolish or silly.
To me, that's everything
But to me, thoughts of you make up my entire world.
The mere idea of you
Just the thought of you is enough to make me feel complete.
The longing here for you
My yearning for you is intense and deep.
You'll never know how slow the moments go
Time seems to drag on when I'm not near you.
‘Til I'm near to you
My happiness and sense of time speed up when I'm close to you.
I see your face in every flower
Your presence is all around me, even in the beauty of nature.
Your eyes in stars above
I even see you in the stars at night.
It's just the thought of you
Simply thinking of you is enough to bring me joy.
The very thought of you
The thought of you alone can light up my day and make me feel complete.
My love
I love you deeply and wholeheartedly.
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, CARLIN AMERICA INC
Written by: Ray Noble
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind