Track Listing

1. Comin' Down
2. Love Light (Cardinal)
3. El Greco
4. Lonely Town
5. "14"
6. Hard To Be Soft
7. It's My Life
8. Safe In Your Arms
9. I Wanna Kiss You
10. In Our Dreams
11. Until I Met You

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10977 in Music
• Released on: 2007-06-12
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .15 pounds

Album Description
Grammy-Award winning, singer/songwriter Paula Cole rediscovers her love of music with her new CD, Courage, her first album in eight years. When asked what Courage means to Paula Cole, she says the word was her daily mantra when recording the record, making for a fitting title. Simply put Cole says, "I am searching for the truth. Somewhere, it's in the music."

An intimate and heartfelt collection of songs, Courage is poised to re-establish Cole's seminal role among the top female recording artists today. Delivered with raw emotional honesty, the singer reveals a rare, disarming vulnerability with these eleven new songs. Her arresting vocals and top-notch songwriting also shine, with highlights including "Comin' Down," the striking opening track (co-penned with guitarist Dean Parks), "14," the memorable anthem co-written with Patrick Leonard (Madonna, Roger Waters), and the confessional "El Greco" (co-penned with Mark Goldenberg). The album also features guest appearances from the legendary Herbie Hancock on the haunting track, "Lonelytown," renowned producer David Foster, who guests as pianist on "In Our Dreams," the distinctive vocals of Paul Buchanan of Blue Nile fame on, "Until I Met You," and the Brazilian singer/songwriter Ivan Lins on the samba-laced, "Hard To Be Soft."

Amazon.com
With her first album in eight years, there seems to be little doubt that Paula Cole is aiming to shake the Sarah McLachlan-wannabe tag that has hung with her since the days of Lilith Fair. Though she rode the alternative wave during those times to her eventual notoriety, this time around Cole appears ready to paddle the mainstream. Enlisting the help of some notable, if unfamiliar, songwriters, the Massachusetts-bred singer has the striking (and professionally trained) voice to make the cut. Cole devotees will drift to a pair of ballads: the sexy, bass-driven "In Our Dreams" and "Lonely Town," a saga of isolation guided by the piano of Herbie Hancock. And while the 11 songs are cohesive enough to run as a package, cuts that stand out as potential hits include "El Greco," a declarative song of restitution, and "Hard to Be Soft," a jazz number decorated with Brazilian-themed rhythms. Whether this renewal can lead to even greater approval remains to be seen--but the audience left over from years gone by is just happy to hear Paula Cole singing again. --Scott Holter

More Paula Cole

Greatest Hits: Postcards from East Oceanside

This Fire

Amen

About the Artist
Paula Cole's fourth album, Courage, is about starting over.

Born the daughter of musicians in Rockport, Massachusetts, Cole grew up singing for fun; American songbooks, traditional folksongs, Christmas carols, a capella harmonies. While finding kindred spirits in records, she became a fixture in her school musicals, which catapulted her toward a scholarship for the Berklee Collegbe of Music in Boston, where she studied jazz singing and improvisation.

"I wanted to get inside the chord structure of songs, so that I could improvise inside the changes, " she says. "but it wasn't meant to be...

"I began writing my own songs, and it took me down another path." While a senior at Berklee, she was offered a deal with a jazz label, but declined. "It came too easily, and I didn't want to be limited just to jazz. Something wasn't quite right. So I continued singing weddings and waitressing as I tried to find my inner songs."

In 1993, Peter Gabriel asked her to join his Secret World Tour, after hearing Cole's Imago debut, "Harbinger." Throughout 1994-6, Cole 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 win for Best New Artist. In 1999, she released her third, spiritually soul-influenced album "Amen."

From today's perspective, she has created her finest album: tender, tough, older, wiser... Cole steers her way through the manifold experiences of an adult American woman who has seen much, lost much, gained much, and yet has regained her innocence. Guided by producer and friend Bobby Colomby and Decca Records, it feels like the work of a woman who is in the right place at the right time. Getting to that simple place, as we all know, takes Courage every day.

This song of life is the work of someone back from the prairie. Even more certain that life is hard-won but good, and that from experience should come grace.

Customer Reviews

A new, elegant and more mature departure.
Paula Cole, who grew up in Rockport, Mass. and attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, hit big with her second album This Fire which came out in 1996. She was among a wave of female singer-songwriters that flourished in the mid-'90s and graced the stages of Lilith Fair, and in 1997 Cole won the Grammy for Best New Artist.
Amen followed in 1999 -- a soul-inflected album that dealt unabashedly with Cole's deepening spirituality.
Paula's new album "Courage" is her first for Decca in eight years and is totally different from everything else she has ever sung.
In doing so, Paula reminds me a lot of one her contemporary peers, Joan Osborne who is currently beating almost the same path.
With tracks such as the melancholy "Lonely Town", and the heartfelt "Coming Down"', this is an album you will want to listen to again and again.
With lyrics that tell a story, you'll want to keep the story going for ever.
Stylish and sophisticated, her soulful voice sounds very relaxed and soothing.
The album shows a jazzy, adult oriented flavour all throuout and has the support of some great music guests such as the Brazilian singer/songwriter Ivan Lins on "Hard To Soft", the jazz legend Herbie Hancock on "Lonely Town", Paul Buchanan of Blue Nile on " Until I Met You" and the famed producer (turned into pianist for the occasion) David Foster on "In Our Dreams".
Quite simply brilliant, ALL the tracks are really good, well crafted and produced.
Kudos go to Bobby Colomby, that Paula calls gratefully "her steward", since he took her back, after so long, to songwriting and into a recording studio.
His elegant production, which provides a tasteful but adventurous palette, gives her room to explore and express herself at her best.
I am so glad for her, she deserves to be back on the map as one of the top American singer/songwriters.
I can't speak highly enough about her new songs.
The lovely "Lovelight" won my heart.

Italia (CD/DVD digipak Fan Pack)
To Love Again
When I Fall in Love

A-May-Zing!!!!!
I spotted Paula in Rockport Massachusetts last week....I live there during the summer and I knew that she grew up there and still visits frequently. I "googled" her and discovered that this new album was out. I immediately bought it and can't stop listening to it. The tracks are sexy, hypnotic, jazzy, meaningful, addicting, exciting....just amazing!
I'm so glad she's back....better than before and ready for big big things to come. Paula, if you're reading this....get ready for the grammy's!!!
Please buy this record and listen to it over and over again...Play it while on the treadmill or at an itimate candlelit dinner party. Something for every music taste.

Welcome back
I first heard Paula Cole the night before her first CD was released when she performed with Peter Gabriel on his "Secret World" tour. I went out the next day and bought her CD. I have loved her work since that night many years ago at the Tweeter Center.


Like all of her albums this one has some songs I just want to play over and over and over again, and some that I don't really like. She is a true artist, constantly testing the limits of what she can do with her music. I don't mind those less than perfect songs because of what they lead to in future songs.

I didn't know that Paula had anything new out, and happened to see this in the store. I promptly put back the CD I had gone out to buy, bought this one, and ran home. "Comin' Down" gave me goosebumps, but it was "El Greco" that made me sit in the middle of my livingroom floor and weep. Yes Paula, you've done a damn good job of "feeling emotions in a deeper shade...(of being) the one who puts them to song, and liberat(ing) the heartache comin' down."

Thank you--and welcome home, we missed you.