Paula Cole - I Don't Want to Wait

Paula Cole is a singer, songwriter and producer from Massachusetts. She put out her first solo album, Harbinger, in 1994. Her second album, This Fire, came out in 1996 and was a real breakthrough; she was nominated for seven Grammys, and she won the Grammy for Best New Artist. In fact, that year she was the first woman in Grammy history to be nominated for Producer of the Year without a male collaborator. For this episode, Paula told me about how she made one of the big hits from that album: “I Don’t Want to Wait.” It spent 56 weeks on the Billboard charts. And then, it was heard by millions more, when it was used as the theme song for the hit TV show Dawson’s Creek. These days, Paula has been reclaiming her old music in various ways. A couple of years ago, she re-recorded some of her songs, including “I Don’t Want to Wait.” And that's the version of the song that you’ll hear throughout this episode, and at the end, in its entirety. And on September 10, 2026, Paula is putting out an archival collection of her demos. It’s called Sonic Memoir: Demos 1989-1998. It includes the original demo of “I Don’t Want to Wait,” which you’ll also hear in the episode, as Paula tells the story of how she wrote and produced the song. For more info, visit songexploder.net/paula-cole. https://songexploder.net/paula-cole

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18. I'm going to be performing solo at Roughtrade Records on Denmark Street. And I'm going to be in conversation about my music, moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carrie. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 1:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  in our imagination, if they even register that much. This show is a chance to reach beyond what you know or think you know. If you're curious to learn more about the work lives of other people, check out What It's Like to Be, wherever you get podcasts. This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn. Anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel like you've spent that money wisely. Well, with LinkedIn Ads, you can be sure that you'll get a great return on your investment. You can target your campaigns by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/SongExploder.

• 2:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  That's LinkedIn.com/SongExploder. Terms and conditions apply. This episode contains explicit language.

• 2:34Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Paula Cole is a singer, songwriter, and producer from Massachusetts. She put out her first solo album, Harbinger, in 1994. Her second album, This Fire, came out in 1996 and was a real breakthrough. She was nominated for seven Grammys, and she won the Grammy for Best New Artist. In fact, that year, she was the first woman in Grammy history to be nominated for Producer of the Year without a male collaborator. For this episode, Paula told me about how she made one of the big hits from that album, "I Don't Want to Wait." It spent 56 weeks on the Billboard charts. And then it was heard by millions more when it was used as the theme song for the hit TV show Dawson's Creek.

• 3:17Hrishikesh Hirway?

  These days, Paula has been reclaiming her old music in various ways. A couple of years ago, she rerecorded some of her songs, including "I Don't Want to Wait." And that's the version of the song that you'll hear throughout this episode and at the end in its entirety. And on September 10, 2026, Paula is putting out an archival collection of her demos. It's called Sonic Memoir: Demos 1989 to 1998. It includes the original demo of "I Don't Want to Wait", which you'll also hear in this episode, as Paula tells the story of how she wrote and produced the song.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  I don't want to wait for our lives to be over. Will it be a sorry?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  My name is Paula Cole.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  So it was 1996. I had released my first album, Harbinger, which was well-received critically. And it was important that I follow up with something. My life is changing. I'm touring. I'm singing in coffeehouses for 50 people with my own material. But that's growing. I had like a string of failed relationships. I was 28, so I was just in the throes of being in one's 20s in the 90s in New York City. So that's a shitstorm. And I mean, I've lived in the self-help book section. So that's the climate in which I wrote that song.

• 4:54Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you remember what you were specifically thinking about when you started?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  I was in a meditative mood. And I was in tune with the feeling that my grandfather was going to pass.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  I grew up in Rockport, Massachusetts, for most of my childhood with Grandma and Grandpa down the street. And that was incredible. You learn so much about yourself through learning about your family, your history. And my formative years with my grandparents were just those kind of loving times with grandparents. But you notice things. You know, the caution not to ever surprise Grandpa and so forth. There were just these stories that slipped out. My grandpa came home from World War II and came home with PTSD changed. But there was no vocabulary.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  There was no real understanding about what he went through or how to deal with it. So all of that PTSD just gets buried in a relationship, in a marriage, and it comes out sideways. And it comes out as abuse. And it comes in as this cyclical force that then touches generations. It touched my father, who lived with abuse. And then us, we lived with abuse. And I'm thinking about how I don't want to repeat that. I don't. With all my heart and soul, I want to try to be conscious and look at my life. And all of that kind of coalesced in this song, precipitated by the feeling that my grandfather was going to die, which he did soon after the writing of the song.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  I lived on 15th Street in Chelsea of New York City. It was a townhouse apartment. I had a piano. I had a spinet piano. It's the smallest of the pianos. So it has kind of the smallest sound. But when I moved to New York from San Francisco, I was only playing digital pianos. And I missed an acoustic piano so badly. And I bought this Wurlitzer Spinet. That's the only one that would fit up the stairwell, basically. And we had it hoisted up the townhouse stairs to the second floor where my apartment was. And so many songs were born out of that acoustic piano.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Tom Waits says, like, our fingers are like old dogs. They go to the same places. And I try really hard to move my fingers to new places. But I have to say, I love the black keys.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  So probably my fingers were wandering around that space. And I remember thinking about James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" and how the bassline is that gorgeous descending major scale, essentially.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  I've seen fire and I've seen rain.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  And I'd noticed that in a couple of other songs and just how anthemic it makes a chorus when you have that gorgeous descending major scale in the bassline. And I was thinking about the top of a chorus, melodically. How do I want the top of a chorus to just kill, you know? I remember thinking like Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do with It." That hook of, "Oh, what's love got to do?" You know, the, "Oh." It's so hooky. And I can be as arty as the next person, and I'm proud of my eccentricities. But I also really love like economical pop writing

• 8:45Speaker 01

  that just goes for the jugular and hooks you in. And that song is just killer. And where her vocal lands. So that's like my more analytical brain kind of entering the flow space of writing. So it's all those things, like my hands gravitating towards the black keys, the anthemic bassline, trying to find a killer melodic opening for a chorus, and thinking about my grandfather. You know, "I Don't Want to Wait" is this like interesting mixture of all these vectors. I don't want to wait for our lives to be over. I want to know right now, will it be?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I don't want to wait for our lives to be over. Will it be a sorry?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  So the initial seeds were laid on my spinet piano.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  And then I asked Jay Bellaro's to come on over. Because he's such a beautiful heart, soul, and drummer. Like, oh, my gosh. I started playing with Jay when I was 19, and we met at Berklee College of Music. He's one of my primary influences. I love him so dearly. And he's like my right arm musically and musical soulmate. So I'd ask him, like, can you come on over? Let's want to record some demos, get the ideas down. I had learned enough to just kind of do some basic mic setup around his drums. It was always really important to capture the air around the drums. And that's the way Jay plays, is like, you need to hear the room.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  We probably like rehearsed it once or twice, and then we hit record.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  It's pretty loose and it's just me and Jay in the apartment living room.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  We're just finding the song and there's beauty in that freedom of the search.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  This being the 90s and the record companies being what they were, they wanted to hear the songs in demo form before they would pick up their option for album number two and give you the budget to go into a proper studio, right? With a producer and spend all that money. So you had to make demos and that was the hugest pain in the ass. But now I'm really, really, really grateful for it because I learned how to self-produce and I learned about the process and kind of exercised my musicianship in a more deep way. It made me think about music more creatively, more expansively. It also was amazing because now I own all the masters of those demos and I'm releasing

• 12:12Speaker 01

  them and they're my masters, which is awesome.

• 12:17Hrishikesh Hirway?

  More with Paula Cole on the making of "I Don't Wanna Wait," coming up after the break.

• 12:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 13:18Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by Tidal. If you're an artist or if you know somebody making music, you should know about Tidal Upload. It's a way to share and sell music without the usual barriers. You can upload your music directly to Tidal at no cost. You decide how you want to release it. You can share it publicly with Tidal listeners, or you can keep it private until you're ready. Or you can sell your music directly through Tidal Upload. Your music will also be considered by Tidal's editorial team for their playlists. And if your track is selected for their spotlight program, you'll get $1,000 bonus and you'll be on one of their marquee playlists. And now, Tidal has dropped its platform fee to 0%, which means you keep more of your earnings there than on any other platform.

• 14:02Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit tidal.com/songexploder to create an account and start uploading your music for free. That's tidal.com/songexploder for zero platform fees on every sale. Your music, your earnings. Song Exploder is sponsored by Ethos, who make it easy to get life insurance coverage. When my wife and I first got married, we were thinking a lot about our future and how to best prepare ourselves financially. Luckily, we got some very wise advice that the most important thing that we could do at that point was to get life insurance because it would provide us a safety net that would give us more protection than any kind of short-term savings that we'd be able to set aside.

• 14:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You can take that advice as well and help protect your family by getting fast and easy life insurance coverage through Ethos, 100% online. On their website, you can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and get same-day coverage. It's great for almost every budget, with some policies as low as $30 each month, and you can get up to $3 million in coverage. So take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/songexploder. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash songexploder. Application times may vary, rates may vary.

• 15:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So after you made the demo, how did you begin the process for recording the album version of the song?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Well, I had a false start in the earlier part of 1996 and I recorded a version of "This Fire" with Kevin Killen and Jerry Leonard. Kevin Killen is a brilliant engineer-producer and I first heard of Kevin Killen through Peter Gabriel's "So" album. I asked Kevin to produce my very first album and Kevin Killen brought Paul Bushnell on bass and he brought Jerry Leonard on guitar. And Jerry and I began dating and he moved from Ireland to New York City. And so Kevin was the producer on "Harbinger" and it's a very different album. It's probably the most pristine out of all the recordings I've made.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  He's very meticulous in the studio.

• 16:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And so the idea was that Kevin Killen would produce your second album as well?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Yes. And we started an incarnation, like the first incarnation of "This Fire," my second album. But it wasn't feeling right. I didn't feel like it was coming out the way I wanted it to. And don't get me wrong, Kevin Killen, I've learned so much from him and he's so brilliant. I just wanted to make a different kind of record that was sloppier and was more raw. So I had to go to the record company and say, "I want to re-record it. Will you support me if I produce myself?" And they did let me, but I had to record the whole album on half a budget. And so that meant my finding tape at cost, everyone getting kind of paid lower salaries probably than they deserved.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  I was recording in the wee hours of the studio time, you know, after hours.

• 17:18Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Was that painful? I mean, having had this relationship with the producer on, you know, an album that had gotten you this far to say, "No, no, I don't want to work with you."

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Oh, it's brutal. It's so brutal. I lost my boyfriend and my producer in that decision because they were best mates and both from Ireland. It's painful to talk about it, but I just, you have to trust your gut.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  It allowed me the freedom of self-production, the learning, and did it myself.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  It was fast. Jay and I, we recorded nine tracks back to front with Roger Muttino this time. We recorded at the Magic Shop in New York City. Roger Muttino was like the perfect engineer who got it because he was doing kind of more lo-fi projects like Yo La Tengo and he just was coming from the right headspace because I wanted to produce it myself. And all the men that I was interviewing to like engineer the album, they would automatically assume that they were taking the producer role because that was the climate at the time, like, "Okay, little young girl, I'll pat you on the head. Yes, I'll take, I'll take the reins now and I'll be the producer now." And it was so shocking to me, like, "You're not listening to my words. Like, I've asked you to come to this interview as an engineer."

• 18:45Speaker 01

  And then finally Roger Muttino comes and he hears my words and I'm still working with him to this day because he supports a woman's voice because he's actually listening. So we went in the studio and just played piano and drums live.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Greg Lees flew in from LA. He recorded all of his guitars in three days.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And Tony Levin on bass.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  The story of my grandmother is in verse one. She had two babies. One was six months, one was three. In the war of 44. She had two babies. One was six months, one was three. So that's my father, six months, and one was three. My aunt, in the war of 44. That's setting the stage of my grandfather being in World War II and fighting in the Battle of Okinawa and so forth. And then, "Oh, would her son grow to know his father." And that was based on a conversation I had with my grandmother. I had been carrying that around for a long time. Oh, would her son grow to know his father?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  And then moving on to verse two. He showed up all wet on the rainy front step, wearing shrapnel.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  That's the story my grandma told me. Grandpa came home on a rainy day and he showed up at the front door, probably after being in hospitals and he had shrapnel all in his legs.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  And now he has granddaughters. So that's me. So all of these feelings, like looking at my grandfather in a historical way, a storytelling way, how it affected me, how generational trauma just moves silently through generations, subconsciously. I was realizing that I'm having a string of failed relationships. I want to look at that. I want to learn. I want a meaningful, long-lived relationship. I want a life partner. So I don't want to keep repeating these mistakes, these unexamined cycles of misery. No.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  And then the bridge.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, his father and his father and his father. That lays out just how generational it is. So it's like the jaws of anger, the jaws of the past, the jaws of our shitty shit in the subconscious that rule us like ghosts. The only way is to kind of be willing to open up that Pandora's box, look at yourself compassionately, do the work. And you start to free up and you get a little better at your parenting, a little better in your relationship. You have more compassion for people, a little more space. And that's in the intro and the outro.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  If humanity is going to make it, then we must find our empathy for each other. And we must look each other in the eye and see the goodness in each other, see the peace in each other, see the love in every eye. So that's what I mean by that.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  I added a couple overdubs while we were mixing. We were mixing at Looking Glass, which I think was Philip Glass's studio. Roger Mutino was mixing the track and I added this little ostinato guitar part, electric guitar part, and I'm not a guitar player really, but I just added that in. It just felt like it needed a little frosting. I said, wait a minute, we need to throw up a vocal microphone in the booth. And I added the do vocals.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  It's a small vocal arrangement.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  It gives it like something ethereal and pretty and something that people can sing along to.

• 24:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And so just to be clear, the stems that we're listening to right now, these are from a rerecording that you did.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And I was wondering, why did you end up rerecording the song?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  I suppose it was just a reclamation of my work. And I'll be honest, it was financial. I've signed such a terrible contract and I hate to talk about it in such, like, economic terms, but it is a business and it preys upon young artists like I was. And, you know, I'd heard about Aerosmith rerecording one of their big hits. So they owned the master and I thought that was pretty damn smart. So I did it to start reclaiming my life. And it's really like an empowerment move. So this is the rerecord. And when we rerecorded "I Don't Want to Wait,"

• 25:14Speaker 01

  what you're listening to now, we are doing like a forensic rerecord so that it sounds like the original. My same drummer is Jay Bellaro's. Kevin Berry is on the guitars here. And I've been playing with him since I was a teenager as well. Like, we all met when we were students. That's our original band, Jay, Kevin and me.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  I actually played "I Don't Want to Wait" for my father first to kind of warn him because I had already been through some experiences with my family. When a writer writes about you, you want to give them a fair warning. It can really be hard on the people you love. So I played that song for him and it really moved him and it incentivized me to add it to this fire.

• 26:20Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you always know that it was going to be a single?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  We weren't planning on releasing it, but "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" that was the first single. And that was like rocket fuel. And what do we follow it up with? Well, we just, we put out "I Don't Want to Wait" and it didn't chart as high, but it did really well on the adult alternative charts. It was number one there and it just stayed number one for a really long time. And then it was picked up by Kevin Williamson and then it became the theme song for Dawson's Creek.

• 26:52Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And were you surprised by that?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  The thing is, a lot of my songs were being requested for pilots and the pilots would come and then they'd die. And it just wasn't a big deal. It was, the only big deal was that Kevin Williamson wanted to call me and talk to me personally about using "I Don't Want to Wait" for his series and he loved the song and he was a fan and he was asking me personally. So I could tell he had a lot of reverence and intention and I really respected that. So I said yes and then I went about my life. And I had my daughter and I took a break from the road. And meanwhile, Dawson's Creek, this little show that I said yes to a pilot, then became a smash.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  And it became such a smash that people started forgetting who the singer was or who the artist was. They just know the song and then they start associating it with the television show. And so that really bothered me for actually many years. It really bothered me and it depressed me. You can get forgotten and meanwhile, the song just lives on and on and on. So there was this strong association, which I kind of resented. But then, like after a while, I let go of that curmudgeonly part of myself that resented it. And meanwhile, it's like artists are getting reamed in the music business. We need to stay alive and this is a fantastic way to deliver our music meaningfully through television.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  So there's no more judgment about it and now it's brilliant. Now I'm so lucky. I'm grateful. I can't even believe it. And it just continues to go on and on in a way that is so mysterious and beautiful and profound and I'm very humbled by it. It's like the song of my life. I say that over and over. It really is the song of my life.

• 28:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's "I Don't Want to Wait" by Paula Cole in its entirety.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  That if we are to stay alive and see the peace in every eye.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  She had two babies, one was six months, one was three, in the war of 44.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Every telephone rang, every heartbeat stinging when she thought it was God calling her. Or would her son grow to know his father?

• 29:58Speaker 03

  I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over. I want to know right now, will it be?

• 30:09Speaker 03

  I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over. Will it be, yes, oh, will it be?

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  He showed up all wet on the rainy front step, wearing shrapnel in his skin.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  And the war he saw lives inside him still. It's so hard to be gentle and warm. The years pass by and now he has granddaughters.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over. I want to know right now, will it be?

• 31:12Speaker 03

  I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over. Will it be, yes, oh, will it be? Oh, so you look at me from across the room.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  You're wearing your anguish again.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  Believe me, I know the feeling. It sucks you into the jaws of anger.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Oh, so breathe a little more deeply, my love.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  All we have is this very moment.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  And I don't wanna do it. His father, his father, his father did. I wanna be here now.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  So open up your morning light and say a little prayer for us. You know that if we are to stay alive and see the peace in every eye. I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over. I want to know right now, will it be?

• 32:28Speaker 03

  I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over. Will it be, yes, oh, will it be?

• 32:38Speaker 03

  I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over. I want to know right now, will it be?

• 32:49Speaker 03

  I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over. Will it be, yes, oh, will it be?

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  So open up your morning light and say a little prayer for us. You know that if we are to stay alive and see the love in every eye.

• 33:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  To learn more, visit songexploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream "I Don't Wanna Wait," and you can watch the music video. You'll also find links to Sonic Memoir: Demos 1989 to 1998.

• 34:04Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, Kathleen Smith, and Tiger Biscuit. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi K. Shirway. Thanks for listening.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  Radiotopia. From PRX.

• 34:52Speaker 05

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