Third time isn’t the charm| Paula Cole’s Amen is a swing and miss into R&B and Soul music.
You probably know Paula Cole’s work without even realizing it. Her single “I Don’t Want to Wait” was used as the theme to Dawson’s Creek. That’s, unknowingly, where I first heard her music. Cole has been around for a while. After graduating from Berklee’s College of Music, she toured with Peter Gabriel on his 1992 tour. You can see footage of her singing Kate Bush’s part of “Don’t Give Up” on YouTube. In 1994, she would would release her first record Harbinger. It would be 1996 that would be Paula’s big year. Her second album, This Fire, was a huge success. The singles “Where Have All The Cowboy’s Gone” and “I Don’t Want to Wait” would receive constant airplay. The record would go double platinum and give Cole a grammy for best new artist. The album was a confessional mix of alternative and singer/songwriter tracks that shone brilliantly during a time where female alt rock was en vogue on mainstream radio. She would go on tour with Lilith Fair in 1997 and have her song “Feelin’ Love”, off This Fire, be used in the soundtrack for City of Angels. The question on everyone’s mind was what would Cole follow up her breakthrough record with? She would take sharp turn into the realms of R&B with her follow up album Amen. The album is a blend of R&B, Soul, Gospel, and Rap, which is used to various degrees of success. The album would receive mixed reviews on release.
“I Believe in Love” is the first single off of the record. The song is a spectacular mix of swirling strings and her funky, soulful backing band. It immediately calls back to 70s disco soul that makes you want to grab your roller-skates and move. Cole’s voice is phenomenal on the track. It really shows off the entirety of Paula’s range and technical skill beautifully. The only turn off for me is a few of the lyrics to the song. This will be a common theme to the entire album. The song is about the burning ache to create a life with this man she’s fallen for since she was a young girl. The chorus’s focus on love being the center of all things works here. The lines that really bother me in the song are, “I saw a vision where we/ Were opening presents Christmas Day / But we were not all alone / The wedding was shotgun / We had a daughter and a son”, which is omitted in the radio edit which greatly enhances the song for me. I’m rather surprised that this song wasn’t a bigger hit that it was, only making it to number 22 on the Adult Alternative charts. It’s length, being almost 6 minutes on the album, maybe part of the issue.
“Amen” is where we really start to get into self righteous territory lyrically. The song sonically sounds lovely. It’s a soft contemporary pop track that would have fit easily in with the songs on her prior album. The lyrics at their roots seem to be about forgiveness and thanks, specifically through spirituality. This can, at times, feel slightly self indulgent. It’s not until the bridge, which is in a list format, that the song jumps the shark for me. The “Amens” she calls out go from very self indulgent, “Amen for the drivers in their garbage trucks /Amen for our mothers, for the lust to fuck /Amen for the child with innocent eyes / Amen for Kevorkian and the right to die / Amen for NASA, The NSA”, to questionable at best, “Amen for Marilyn Manson, Saddam Hussein / Amen for America and the Milky Way / Amen for Elvis, for Betty Page / Amen for Gloria Steinham and Ronald Reagan / Amen for O.J., Clinton too /Amen for the Republican witch hunt coup”. It just comes off as the kind of “deep” that you say you are when you’re trying way too hard. She could have cut the entire bridge from this song and it would be been a very good song. The song, as is, comes it at just under 6 minutes and it heavily weighed down by that self righteous but overall empty meaning bridge.
“La Tonya” is where some of the more heavy R&B atmosphere begins to come into the album. On top of the theme of overly “deep” but often empty feeling lyrics, the other issue on this album is just how long the songs are. “La Tonya” comes it at over 6 minutes in length. My last big gripe with this album is that sometimes it almost off as stereotypical and appropriating. The song’s central theme revolves around the girl, La Tonya’s, unwavering faith in God through all her lives terrible troubles that she will be delivered to a better life. At it’s core, I do like the sentiment being told here. It’s delivery is questionable at best. La Tonya comes from a broken home, where her father left her, her mother’s unemployed, her step father abuses her, and her baby brother’s on crack. The stereotypical themes here are extremely off putting to me. Some of the other lyrics, “I dream I get a record deal/ I’ll buy a way out of here/ Or maybe a new Lexus jeep/ Or just a friend, am I dreamin’? Am I dreamin’?”, just feel very sus to me. The ending lyrics also just feel like they’re trying way too hard, “Still my faith’s unshaken/ Lord won’t you please save me?/ Is this the new slavery?/ Here on the ghetto pavement?/ But I believe in you baby/ Yes, my faith’s unshaken in God”. The entire song just comes off as your extremely liberal friend that totally “understands the struggle” that minorities go through.
“Pearl” is one of my few favorites off of the record. Although the song is very long, coming in at just over 6 minutes, it’s much more in the vein of her prior work. The song sounds like something that would have fit in on This Fire very well. The main theme, personal growth and overcoming one’s inner demons. The spiritual themes are still present on this track, but it feels much more fleshed out. Cole is looking to God for strength to get through her doubts, “It’s dark in here, don’t know who I am/ Memories come, I’m wading through the moon/ Evil side, wants to drag me down/ Will power, God, please give me some”, as she works on bettering herself in this relationship she’s in. She wants her partner to know that, though it maybe rough as she goes through working on her mental state that, “I’m the grain of sand/ Becoming the pearl”. It’s one of the strongest tracks on the record lyrically.
“Be Somebody” continues the trademark gentle folk pop sound she became known for from her prior records. The song is one of the shorter tracks on the album, at just over 5 minutes. The lyrics to the song fall extremely flat. The subject matter of the song revolves around wanting to make a difference in the world and “Be Somebody” that does good. The verses really kill this notion instantly. The first verse follows a young boy that witnesses who killed his father in a drive-by and is murdered for pointing out his father’s killer. The second verse follows a former homeless drug addict that found god in prison. From this, he went on to have a very large congregation of followers and delivered many across the world. In the end, he was murdered by some of his followers. Through these terrible scenarios you the following lines, “And, oh my God, what is this madness?/ I will not let it kill my gladness/ And, oh my God, what is this sadness?/ My joy inside will send this message”, which just reads “If I don’t think about these terrible things and spread joy, things will get better”. It’s so tone deaf that it just feels like a missionary that comes to a 3rd world country to spread the word and leave without helping anyone at all. The song would be the second single off of the record and receive two remixes for the radio. It does not appear that the song charted.
“Rhythm of Life” is probably the most polarizing track on the record regarding critical reception. The song is a nearly 8 minute long track that mixes in R&B and rap elements. Paula raps on the song rather listlessly (more of a spoken word that rap) along to the addition of record scratches and a more standard R&B/Hip-hop sound for the time period. It really doesn’t work. The song has some of the most full of itself lines on the entire album. The beginning is extremely judgmental and was huge turn off, “To the atheists and the pessimists/ Wanting company in their darkness/ You may see me as a fool, yes, a charlatan, an egotist,/ But i’d rather be this in your eyes,/ Than a coward in his”. I hate it. It then dives into a lot of spiritual imagery, from Isis to Jesus. The thesis here seems to be a spiritual rebirth and finding enlightenment through this. It’s a highly skippable song. It should have been about 4 minutes shorter and about half as full of itself. I like the idea of the song and I think that Paula was working her way to something, but it just feels a bit too into itself to be enjoyed for me.
“Free” is the shortest track on the album, coming in at just under 4 minutes. I really love the sound of the song. It’s slightly jazzy, in a easy-listening way, and soul with its electric guitars and bass. Cole is working through her loneliness and emptiness that she’s been feeling. Through all this, she hopes to find inner peace and freedom through this person she has romantic feeling for. This is lyrically one of the best tracks on the album. I do like lines in the first verse, “People say hello but I don’t know what to say / I don’t know how I feel, I just can’t act that way/ I want to hide from all these strangers / I want to run home to you / All I need is your compassion/ Then we can be free, yes”, which does a great job at displaying her inner turmoil.
“Suwannee Jo” has delta blues feel. The soulful mix of clarinet and Cole’s percussive pie tin add to this rootsy tone. The linear notes say that this song was inspired by Zora Neal Hurston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God. I remember reading the book back in high school. Much like how the novel is set in the early 1900s, the song appears to be as well. The lyrics to the song don’t feel like they take much in the way of inspiration from the book at all. There’s nothing that seems to be drawn from Janie, Stark, or Tea Cake. Instead, you get this limp story of Suwannee Jo. Her writing is the weakest here by far, “But Suwannee Jo, you’re dark and slow/ You dance with a broom and you’re filled with ghosts/ You smell like liquor and you’re high as a hawk/ You laugh to yourself but you talk like a rock”. It just feels weak. I wish she workshopped the lyrics more. I love the sound and her voice on the track.
“God is Watching” closes the album. This one has some of the cringest lyrics out of all of the songs on the album. The concept of the song is that God is watching us quarrel and fight and is waiting on us to come together and unify. It’s just a glorified “we are all one” track that goes over the injustices of the world very superficially. She does touch on the disproportionate amount of minorities in the prison system and the inequalities people of color see, but these are just in one or two lines. Same goes for the suffering from the wars of the time period. The cringiest lines have to be, “Whether we be cracker or black or / Brown, red, yellow/ From the land or sky or sea/ We are family / Wake up and see”. It feels so much like “look I’m one of the good ones” that I have to facepalm.
The album was commercial failure. It would make it to only number 92 on the Billboard charts and only sell a little over 100,000 copies to date. Compared to the success of its predecessor, the record flopped. Paula would appear in Charmed as one of the show’s musical guests during its second season. After this project, Cole would retreat from the industry to focus on herself and raise her child. She would return in 2007 with the album Courage. Her follow up record, Ithaca, would be more of a return to form for Cole. It’s a great album. The following records would be crowdfunded projects. I recommend giving Raven and 7 a listen. She’s even dived into jazz with her Ballads record. I do enjoy Paula’s music and consider myself a fan of her work, but I can’t help but to feel this record was a swing and a miss. There are tracks I really enjoy on this album. I think the production and Cole’s voices are absolutely stunting. She definitely has the chops to sing soul and R&B. The issue is the lyrics. The album feels like it wants to be Lauyrn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauren Hill, but it’s not even in the same neighborhood. Hill’s album tackles religion and cultural issues, specifically black cultural issues, in a honest and thought provoking way. Cole’s just feels bloated and self important. I hate it, because I love the concept. Paula is still proud of the record, and I think that’s the most important thing. It’s just not for me. It’s a shame. My overall highlights off the record:
- “I Believe in Love”
- “Pearl”
- “Free”
My overall rating: 2 out of 10 Amens…
