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.
Wild Women Do
Natalie Cole Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
As simple as a flower.
Well if you want me to act like that,
You'd better pay me by the hour.
Don't want to travel in the danger zone
Take another number
Don't want a lover who can hold her own
Because
[Chorus]
Wild women do
And they don't regret it
Wild women show
What they're goin' through
Wild women do
What you think they'll never
What you only dream about
Wild women do.
You think that love is a vision of
A princess in a picture
Well let me tell you something, little boy
You wouldn't know love if it hit ya
Scared of someone who is off the wall
Kickin' and a screamin'
Don't you want a lover who can do it all?
Listen to me Jack
I ain't holdin' back
'cause
[Chorus]
Come on and wild with me baby.
Everybody come on,
Everybody get wild.
[Chorus]
The lyrics to Natalie Cole's song "Wild Women Do" convey a message of empowerment and liberation for women who refuse to be confined by society's expectations of how they should behave. The opening lines suggest that the singer's partner desires a stereotypically feminine woman who is "simple as a flower," but the singer is not willing to put on such a facade without being compensated for it. The singer is asserting her independence and value, refusing to conform to anyone else's expectations unless the price is right.
The chorus then takes a turn, with the repeated phrase "wild women do" emphasizing the importance of embracing one's unconventional, unapologetic nature. The idea of not regretting one's actions suggests a willingness to take risks and follow one's desires without being weighed down by societal judgment. The final verse dismisses the idea of love being society's idealized picture of a princess, instead asserting that true love cannot be confined to such narrow expectations. The singer emphasizes the virtues of someone who is "off the wall" and unafraid to be themselves, rather than someone who conforms to society's expectations of what a partner should be.
Overall, the lyrics to "Wild Women Do" encourage a rejection of societal norms and a refusal to conform to expectations placed upon women. The song celebrates the wild, unapologetic nature of women who are not afraid to blaze their own path in life.
Line by Line Meaning
You tell me you want a woman who's As simple as a flower.
You claim to want a woman who's easy-going and low-maintenance.
Well if you want me to act like that, You'd better pay me by the hour.
If you expect me to be someone I'm not, you might as well compensate me for it.
Don't want to travel in the danger zone Take another number
I'm not interested in being part of a risky or dangerous situation, find someone else.
Don't want a lover who can hold her own Baby step aside if you don't want to ride Because
I don't need someone to protect me, so if you can't handle that, move out of the way.
Wild women do And they don't regret it Wild women show What they're goin' through Wild women do What you think they'll never What you only dream about Wild women do.
Unconventional women take risks and don't feel remorse or shame for it. They show their real, raw selves, even if others can't handle it. Further, they break boundaries that others thought were impossible.
You think that love is a vision of A princess in a picture
You believe that love is portrayed as a fairytale, picturesque scenario of perfection.
Well let me tell you something, little boy You wouldn't know love if it hit ya
But in reality, you have no idea what love actually feels like or is. You're still inexperienced when it comes to it.
Scared of someone who is off the wall Kickin' and a screamin' Don't you want a lover who can do it all?
You're afraid of someone who's unconventional and expressive, but why wouldn't you want someone who's passionate and capable of everything?
Listen to me Jack I ain't holdin' back, 'cause
Pay attention, I'm not going to withhold anything.
Come on and wild with me baby. Everybody come on, Everybody get wild.
Join me in embracing the unconventional, wild parts of yourself and let's have some fun.
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Downtown Music Publishing
Written by: SAM LORBER, DAN PETTY, MATTHEW WILDER
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
AWhileHanlin
Love that 80s pop bass growl and jangly guitar with a hint of brass
AlexKx
That is Jennifer Batten playing some of the guitar!
Gervan Simon
Absolutely loved this song- bought the single of it on cassette tape- which is probably still in my loft actually!
Still sounding fab in 2019 :-)
Would love to go back to my youth & enjoy all the great music again.
ralphkjb
Gervan Simon
I bought that single too from the Sound Warehouse in 1990. It was a Saturday. It was a sunny day.
f9mike
@ralphkjb I wish that the record company would rerelease all of Natalie's albums in a deluxe/remaster edition
ralphkjb
f9mike
Include radio edits and B-sides and I’m in.
f9mike
@ralphkjb most defiantly and maybe a few unreleased songs.re-release of her albums 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's
mo sultan
Pretty woman soundtrack... Great memories , one of the best movies of all time
Christopher Stein
Agree!!! 1990 was a great year. 1991 became a very bad year for me and the world.
beingsshepherd
@Christopher Stein Soviet Union collapse?