Singer/songwriter Paula Cole exploded on to the music scene in the 1990s with her poetic, introspective lyrics and creative, dreamy melodies. These days she views her stage performances as “vacations from her life” and she brings that journey to Edmonds Center for the Arts Friday, Oct. 23.
Born the daughter of musicians in Rockport, Mass., Paula grew up singing for fun: American songbooks, traditional folk songs, Christmas carols, a capella harmonies. She became a fixture in her school musicals, which catapulted her toward a scholarship for the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she studied jazz singing and improvisation. Although offered a record contract from a jazz record label, she declined it so as not to be pigeonholed into one musical format.
In 1993, Peter Gabriel asked her to join his Secret World Tour, after hearing Cole’s Imago debut, “Harbinger.” Throughout 1994-1996, she toured America extensively, building a foundation of support that then embraced her 1997 album “This Fire.” It became a breakthrough smash yielding the hits, “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?” and “I Don’t Want to Wait” (which was used as the theme song to the hit WB show Dawson’s Creek), and the 1997 Grammy for Best New Artist.
That summer, Paula participated in the first Lilith Fair, a traveling festival Sarah McLachlan designed to showcase female artists and received a significant boost of profile from the tour. In 1999, she released her third, spiritually soul-influenced album “Amen.” She then took a nine-year hiatus to get married (since divorced) and have a child.
Her fourth album “Courage” was released in 2007 and she expects to release her next album in summer 2010.
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