Cole looks back without anger
Former best new artist Grammy winner took time away for a much-needed reset
NEW YORK Twenty years ago, Paula Cole heard her name called, went up to the stage and took home the Grammy Award for best new artist. It was an amazing achievement on a night that turned out to be quite complicated.
The then-30-year-old met her idol, Aretha Franklin, and sang her hit Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? in front of millions.
But she also felt misunderstood and uncomfortable in the spotlight.
Cole shocked some people by raising her middle finger and beatboxing during her performance, and triggered jokes for daring to bare armpit hair.
All these years later, that Grammy isn’t her favourite accomplishment.
That would be her daughter, Sky, now 16. And her fans, who have stayed loyal, funding her last two albums via Kickstarter.
Her story is a cautionary one for anyone thinking that winning one of music’s most coveted awards solves everything.
“That night was laden and confused and amazing,” says Cole, who turns 50 in April.
“My career on the other side of that has been definitely different — smaller, humbler, a more authentic career.
“A more authentic second adulthood, if you will.”
The Berklee College of Musictrained Cole is now touring to promote her album Ballads, a collection of 20 jazz covers primarily from the 1930s to 1960s.
“I intended to be a jazz singer. That’s where I started and my first gigs were in jazz clubs,” she says. “I got rerouted because I wanted to write my own songs with my own truths.”
Cole went into the Grammy Awards in New York in 1998 as a Lilith Fair veteran with seven nominations from her second album, This Fire, which contained the hit I Don’t Want to Wait, which became the theme song for Dawson’s Creek.
Her Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? — a wry, ironic study of gender stereotypes — had been incorrectly seen by some as nostalgic and anti-feminist. Her flipping the bird onstage was a sign that she was firmly in satire mode but it also underlined her discomfort that night.
“I was a very dark horse — selfproduced, definitely very progressive and left,” says Cole, who took home best new artist honours, beating boy band Hanson, singers Fiona Apple and Erykah Badu, and rapper Diddy.
Cole faced a backlash and her manager complained that sales of her music plummeted. Jay Leno made a Paula Cole doll with rotating armpits to shine his shoes with.
She has a quality about her that really draws people close to her and helps students learn more about themselves.
“There was a lot of hate coming down on me after,” she says. “All of that attention was ill-fitting for this introvert. And I ebbed away after the Grammys.”
Cole took eight years off to raise her daughter. She looks back and realizes she probably never really belonged on the Top 40 charts.
“That trajectory that I was on needed to be stopped. This is who I’m meant to be now. I needed to stop and I needed a reset. I needed to take a hiatus — kind of shed that ill-fitting skin that somehow was created for me.”
Cole has returned to the Berklee College of Music in Boston as a voice teacher, offering classes that quickly oversubscribe. Anne Peckham, who chairs the voice department, calls Cole a beloved teacher known for her generosity.
Cole even offers her most talented students the chance to open for her when she performs. “She has a quality about her that really draws people close to her and helps students learn more about themselves,” Peckham says. “Can you imagine as a student having a Grammy winner offer to help you in your career by opening up for them?”