5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: Paula Cole

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Name  Paula Cole

Best known for  My songs, “I Don’t Want to Wait,” “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?,” also Lilith Fair, Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live, feminism.

Current city  Beverly, Massachusetts

Really want to be in  I’m a displaced New Yorker. I love it and miss it terribly. I’ll live there again very soon. Also, I see myself visiting Ireland, U.K. and Spain more frequently in the future. 

Excited about  I just produced the debut album for a young artist (Eva James) called Earth to Eva and her songs are wise, sorrowful, pop gems. Please keep an eye out for that. Also, I’m compiling my early demos from the ‘90s—they span so many formats since digital was nil to nascent. These demos will likely comprise a double-album that I think my core fans will appreciate. I’m hoping for a fall 2025 release for that, before I tour in Canada and the West Coast. I’m also working on a book. Lots of proverbial pots on the stovetop. I rotate.

My current music collection has a lot of  Jazz. I’m glad I bought so much vinyl back in the late 80’s when I fancied myself a vocal improviser and sang a lot of jazz gigs.  I have a lot of Miles, Nat King Cole, Ella, Billie, and Sarah. 

And a little bit of  The Clash. Rufus/Chaka Khan. Rickie Lee Jones. PJ Harvey. Joan Armatrading. Kate Bush. Coltrane. Neil Young. Joni Mitchell. Eurythmics/Annie Lennox. Aretha. Sineád O’Connor. John Lennon. Emmylou Harris.  Nina Simone. Suzanne Vega. Paul Simon. Donna Summer. Peggy Lee.  Stevie Wonder.  Beatles. 

Help, I can’t stop. 

Preferred format  Vinyl is unparalleled as a listening experience, IMHO. The natural sine waves hit your body, it’s a physically superior process to receiving chopped-up, digitized-equivalents of waves hitting your body and ear drums.  You feel refreshed after listening.  You turn the album over, read the art, the credits, the liner notes.  You dream more, part of a transcendental-music-ride. All that being said, of course I stream for convenience when walking and traveling. 

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:

1

Hounds of Love, Kate Bush

I know this album by heart. It has captivated me since its release in the ‘80s, a companion throughout my life. The production fascinated me, it was eccentric, unique. I was curious to know who the producer was. It was Kate. She inspired me to self-produce, to self-advocate for my own eccentric ideas. I thanked Kate Bush when I accepted my Grammy in 1998. I especially love Side B, “The Ninth Wave,” a suite of seven songs that describe a protagonist’s dark journey of the soul. Kate Bush goes where she wants to go, she doesn’t stay in prescribed boxes of sound or song form. I just find it poetic and brave.

2

Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon

I love it because it represents an artist demanding fierce honesty in his life, going against the expectations to remain a Beatle, singing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” on tour in perpetuity. Art is great when the artist heeds the inner voice and not the external pressure of business. John Lennon was on the cusp of turning thirty years old when he recorded Plastic Ono Band. He had found Yoko, his Mount Olympus of love, he paused the Beatles, entered primal scream therapy, and essentially self-produced these sparse rhythm-section sessions because producer Phil Spector never showed up. It was recorded in New York City. New York’s grit and passion renewed John and its spirit is evident in the music. Most nights the songs were mixed immediately after tracking. (I find this so wise.) The tracks are skeletal and raw. His lyrics reveal his truths. The album is an oral autobiography and I love him for being so vulnerable and honest.

3

What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye wanted to make a social-political statement.  He didn’t want to issue more love songs, stylistically dictated by Berry Gordy/Motown. He wanted to join his peers in the movement of consciousness and advocacy. He made What’s Going On and Motown hated it.  They didn’t want to release it.  What I love about it is that he created his own version of rebellion.  It was gentle, musically deft. It wasn’t angry protest music. It was pure love, expressed over a sophisticated, artful groove, layered with imaginative overdubs of background vocal arrangements, gritty sax solos, vintage analog keyboards, percussion and strings. It coaxes the listener to a sense of gentle and loving awakening. In that sense, it is a spiritual album. A concept album. It has made a profound influence on modern music. 

4

The Lion and the Cobra, Sineád O’Connor

Sineád’s voice ripped my heart open as soon as I heard it. The rage, the whisper, the power, the redemption she expresses is therapy for me—her voice vicious, fragile. Her song “Troy” is masterful, a rock aria. I love the spooky simplicity of the production of her first two albums, the weaving of genre (punk, rock, soul, Irish language, and traditional music influence.) Her voice is the center (a volcano, an oasis) and the music is simple, supportive and emotional. I need Sineád in the world, I can’t express how upset I am still that she is gone so young. She was a truth-teller refusing to remain silent, perpetually getting beat up by the media, lifting the ceiling for women, giving us more oxygen in this patriarchy.  

5

Catch a Fire, Bob Marley and The Wailers

It’s hard to choose a Bob Marley/Wailers album, I love so many. I love Bob’s songwriting, simple, humble, profound, poetic. His lifetime mission was clear in his lyrics. He dedicated himself to his spirituality and quest for social justice. The sound of the band—Carlton and Aston Barrett, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, and Bob—has been profoundly influential to me and my close musicians, Jay Bellerose (drums) and Chris Bruce (guitar). Their building of the groove is a lesson in simplicity and profundity, the whole greater than its parts. My drummer Jay turned me onto Bob Marley and The Wailers in the ‘90s. We listened to this music every day on tour and would place a framed portrait of Bob on an old-fashioned cushioned chair at the front of the stage every night. I still play Bob Marley and The Wailers as walk-in music before every concert I perform. 

How I hate leaving these out, they must be mentioned:

Lady Soul, Aretha Franklin

Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell

Kind of Blue OR Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, Miles Davis

Pirates, Rickie Lee Jones

From all of us at SPIN, congrats to Paula on being a 2025 She Rocks Icon recipient. The awards take place this Sunday, January 25, at the Hilton Anaheim Pacific Ballroom.

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.