Song Exploder - Paula Cole - I Don't Want to Wait

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

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.

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 Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. 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 a 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 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. My name is Paula Cole. 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 coffee houses 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. Do you remember what you were specifically thinking about when you started? I was in a meditative mood. And I was in tune with the feeling that my grandfather was going to pass. I grew up in Rockport, Massachusetts. It's for most of my childhood with grandma and grandpa down the street. And that was incredible.

You learned 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,

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, 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.

I lived on 15th Street in Chelsea of New York City. It was a townhouse apartment. I had a piano, I had a spin-it 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 Whirlets or 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. Tom Wade 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. So probably my fingers were wandering around that space. And I remember thinking about James Taylor's Fire and Rain and how the baseline is that gorgeous, descending major scale, essentially. I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end. And I'd noticed that in a couple other songs, and just how anthemic it makes a chorus

when you have that gorgeous, descending major scale in the baseline. 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, what's love got to do with it. That hook of, oh, what's love costs to? 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 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 bass line, trying to find a killer melodic opening for a chorus and thinking about my grandfather. You know, I don't want to wait. It's 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 what will it be? I don't want to wait for it be, so will it be sorry. So the initial seeds were laid on my spin-up piano and then I asked Jay Bella Rose 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 Berkeley 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? Just 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 we probably like rehearsed it once or twice and then we hit record it's pretty loose and it's just me and Jay

in the apartment living room we're just finding the song and there's beauty in that freedom of the search 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 all. It also was amazing because now I own all the masters of those demos, and I'm releasing them, and they're my masters, which is awesome. More with Paula Cole on the making of I Don't Want to Wait, coming up after the break. So after you made the demo, how did you begin the process for recording the album version of the song?

Well, I had a false start in the earlier part of 1996, and I recorded a version of this fire with Kevin Kelly. Kevin Killen and Jerry Leonard. Kevin Killen is a brilliant engineer producer. And I first heard of Kevin Kellyn 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. He's very meticulous in the studio.

And so the idea was that Kevin Killing would produce your second album as well? 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 Kemp, and 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. I was recording in the wee hours of the studio time, you know, after hours. 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?

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. It allowed me the freedom of self-production, the learning, and did it myself. It was fast. Jay and I, we recorded nine tracks back to front with Roger Moutno this time.

We recorded at the magic shop in New York City. Roger Moutonoh was like the perfect engineer who got it because he was doing kind of more lo-fi projects like Yola Tango, 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 patch you on the head. Yes, I'll take, I'll take the range now and I'll be the producer now. Like, and it was so shocking to me, like, you're not listening to my words. It's like, I've asked you to come to this interview as an engineer.

And then finally, Roger Moutenau 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. Greg Lees flew in from L.A. He recorded all of his guitars in three days. And Tony Levin on bass. 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. And then moving on to verse two. He showed up on the rainy front step, wearing shrap, nothing his skin. 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. And the war he saw lives inside him still, it's so hard to be gentle and warm.

The years passed by 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. And then the bridge. Oh, so breathe a little more deeply, my love. Oh, we have. And his father and his father did. I want to be here now.

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. Swooping up your morning light and say a little prayer for a ride. You know that if we are to stay alive. and see the love in every eye. 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. I added a couple overdubs while we were mixing. We were mixing at Looking Glass, which I think was Philip Glasses Studio, Roger Moutno 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 then I added the do-do vocals. It's a small vocal arrangement. It gives it like something ethereal. and pretty and something that people can sing along to. And so just to be clear, the stems that we're listening to right now, these are from a re-recording that you did.

Yeah. And that was wondering, why did you end up re-recording the song? I suppose it was just a reclamation of my work, and I'll be honest, it was financial. I 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 re-recording one of their big hits.

So that 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 re-record. And when we've re-recorded, I don't want to wait. what you're listening to now, we are doing like a forensic re-record

so that it sounds like the original. My same drummer is Jay Bellaroz. Kevin Barry is on the guitars here. And I've been playing with him since I was a teenager as well. We all met when we were students.

That's our original band. Jay, Kevin, and me. I actually played, I don't want to wait for my father first to kind of 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 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. Did you always know that it was going to be a single? We weren't planning on releasing it,

but where of 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 put out Ottawa Wade 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. And were you surprised by that? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. And now here's I Don't Want to Wait by Paula Cole in its entirety. Or visit Song Audeaulda.

Exploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream, I don't want to wait, and you can watch the music video. You'll also find links to Sonic Memoir, Demos, 1989 to 1998. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, Kathleen Smith, and Tiger Biscop. 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 for me, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the

Song Exploder website. You can also get a SongExploder shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening. There's a very cool podcast from Radiotopia called The Selects. It's sort of a curated collection of incredible audio stories that have been unearthed from web archives and radio streams and early podcasts. The host of the show is Mithra Koboli, one of my favorite people in podcasts. And in every episode, she brings you a hidden gem of an audio work that she's found. These include award-winning documentaries, oral histories, and works of sound. It's like a little cabinet of wonders in audio form. Check out the selects at radiotopia.fm, or wherever you get your podcasts.