Paula Cole

Few singers arrive through a side door quite like Paula Cole. Raised in Rockport, Massachusetts, by an art teacher and a biology professor who played bass in a polka band, she trained in jazz at Berklee College of Music. Her music blends folk-rock with jazz-tinged phrasing and often takes on hard subjects, from gender stereotypes and environmental damage to slavery in American history and the Iraq war.

Her break came on Peter Gabriel's Secret World tour of 1993 and 1994, where she sang the female parts after Sinéad O'Connor left. Her debut, Harbinger, followed in 1994, but its label folded soon after and promotion was limited. This Fire (1996) reached number 20 on the Billboard 200, carried by "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" and "I Don't Want to Wait", the Dawson's Creek theme. A 1998 Grammy for Best New Artist followed, then the 1999 album Amen moved sharply away from her earlier sound. More recent records include Courage, Ithaca and Lo, from 2024.