Paula Cole – Transcendent. Inimitable. Authentic. Amen.

3 October 2026, The Bellwether, Los Angeles, CA

Here is another artist I have struggled to put words on keyboard about for years. Partly because she is so singular and transcendent that I have felt my words would not do her justice. Mostly because I have never been able to take photos of her that do her justice. The lighting is never favourable for my poor little camera to take sharp pictures. But my god, I adore Paula Cole, so finally here is something.

She is earth mother and otherworldly. She’s fierce and delicate, powerful and gentle, devoted, earnest and honest and very humble. I have loved her since a friend who knew me so well (thank you Judy K) gifted me her This Fire album 30 years ago. It was in the midst of that fabulous period of strong female music artists, their unintentionally collective but much-welcomed response to the male-dominated grunge thing of the nineties, a clearer way for women like me wanting songs and singers we could relate to. The breakthrough era of Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette, Natalie Merchant, Fiona Apple, Joan Osborne, Jewel, Lisa Loeb, Indigo Girls and of course Sarah McLachlan, who, together with Paula Cole, brought (most of) them and more together for Lilith Fair. Watch that documentary. Then watch it again.

That Brandi Carlile is today’s uniter of so many women artists and was there as a teenager at the first Lilith Fair at The Gorge in Washington state, absorbing it all as a wide-eyed sponge, is no accident. That I love Brandi and struggled to write about her for so long, and happily finally did, is also no accident. That as a teenager I was obsessed with Heart and Linda Ronstadt, struggled musically through the eighties with that decade’s different focus, and in the nineties welcomed the resurgence of women singer-songwriters and song-interpreters, is also logical.

Paula’s breakthrough song “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” was catchy and the lyrics highly sarcastic, and for some reason it put some people off. I told a girlfriend I was looking forward to seeing this show and she said, “Oh, the John Wayne song? I hated that!” Gosh. I loved it and still do. I mean, really, where is my happy ending?? Of all those songs from that Lilith Fair era, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” is up there for me with Natalie’s “Carnival” and Sheryl’s “All I Wanna Do” and Joan’s “(What If God Was) One of Us” and Sarah’s “Adia”. I was always far away from Lilith Fair, even if I was in the States at times over those years; mostly I was living in Byron Bay and playing these songs on my radio show, Debbie Does Breakfast. So it is wonderful that they are all still performing, doing anniversary tours, recording new work. Paula has a big new box set out of demos and previously unreleased songs. She has been touring for the 30th anniversary of This Fire, and she performed the album in its entirety in its track order. And it was sublime to see.

My favourite song from This Fire has always been “Throwing Stones”. It’s epic.

So call me a bitch in heat and I’ll
Call you a motherfucker
And we’ll throw stones until we’re dead

Nothing subtle there. Quite different was the last song on the album, “I Don’t Want to Wait”, which became the theme song for the teen TV drama “Dawson’s Creek”, though for sepia-tinted looking-back-to-look-forward songwriting I prefer her song “14” on the criminally overlooked Courage album.

But if you really want to look at underrated, the album of all Paula Cole albums for me is Amen. That album, which she said was inspired by Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, is a masterpiece and such a right-turn after This Fire, it wasn’t understood by the mainstream. But if Paula could perform that album in its entirety, with full band and some orchestral players, I would be in heaven. Amen to that.

When I met Paula at McCabes Guitar Shop in Santa Monica after her show there in 2017 I told her Amen was my favourite of her albums and that I had played the title track and the opening track “I Believe in Love” constantly on my radio show, and that I loved her so much. I was a gushing fangirl. She took that all in, she took me in, she considered, sighed gently, and said, “Oh, Debbie.” Just that.

I’ve referenced albums from the first decade of her career but her recording output, with some gaps, has been continuous and consistently stunning, including some albums of covers, always mindfully curated. Her 2021 American Quilt album – a patchwork of traditionals – was one of the records I listened to as I wound my way around winding roads on the Northern California coast towards the end of my five-month road trip five years ago. (I really need to write about music on that road trip….). I’m only just now giving myself time to get into her last studio album, Lo, from 2024. But it’s not unfair to admit that when we fall in love with some artists we hook ourselves to the work they did early in that musician/listener relationship. So her second, third and fourth albums are my go-tos. I highly recommend for anyone who hasn’t fully discovered this wondrous artist to head to her website and find out about all of it. All about her beautiful catalog of songs that make the deeply personal so completely universal.

Paula Cole is a tireless, fervent advocate for women, so feminist and so feminine, unapologetic yet modest. Watch her acceptance speech at the 2025 She Rocks Awards. I wish I had been there; it was only a few weeks before I returned to LA last year so I missed it.

She is always deeply moved by her audience’s reaction, as though she is not quite sure she deserves it – despite all she said in that acceptance speech. Her audiences are passionate and the crowds can be intimate, like she is a special secret not enough people know about, or maybe she keeps herself special for us true believers. At the Bellwether, a venue I had not been to before, there was a good-sized, faithful crowd, including a lot of men, which I should not have been so surprised by but I was. I met two beautiful young men who were only small children when her first two albums, Harbinger and This Fire, came out, and they knew everything and adored her like me. I sat next to Shi and we grooved together in the second row. Richard had driven down especially from Las Vegas, was in the front row, and hoped to get some vinyl signed and say hello. I left before I found out if he did, but I hope he did.

I first saw Paula perform at the Troubadour in 1998 when I was spending a year in LA. She was very physical; there was a lot of thrashing around at the piano. There had been comparisons to Tori Amos, but I felt Paula was most distinctive, not a copy of anyone, ever. I sat upstairs at the Troub and was not taking pictures. It was 19 years later that I finally saw her again at McCabes and had that brief chat. Then there was her delightful appearance at the Grammy Museum in 2019. Then last Saturday night at The Bellwether. I hoped being super close at new venue would give me better photo opportunities but the angle of her piano and the low lighting – again – made it tough. So I offer photos from three shows that are all grainy and not doing this sumptuous, graceful artist justice. Oh and that picture someone kindly took of us when she heard me and saw me.

Heaven. Amen.