Natalie Maria Cole (born February 6, 1950), known professionally as Natalie Cole, is an American singer and songwriter.

Personal life

Music career
Her debut album in 1975, Inseparable, resulted in chart success with the single "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" (#1 R&B, #6 Pop). Her performance of the song won her a 1976 Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, a category that had heretofore been monopolized by Aretha Franklin. She also was awarded the Best New Artist Grammy of 1976. She gained a new generation of fans when American Idol finalist Jasmine Trias sang "Inseperable" on the show to extremely good reviews.
More hits followed through 1980, including her biggest Pop hit, 1977's "I've Got Love On My Mind," as well as "Sophisticated Lady (She's A Different Lady)" (1976), "Our Love" (1978), and "Someone That I Used To Love" (1980). "I've Got Love On My Mind" and "Our Love" both earned certifications as Gold singles.

Early career
Cole's career paused in the early 1980s as she dealt with the challenges of her severe drug problem. By 1985, Cole was back in good health, and began a comeback.
Her first step was with the album Dangerous, released on the Modern label. In 1987, she released Everlasting (on EMI Manhattan) which sold over 2 million copies in the U.S., and won Cole a Soul Train Award for Female Single of the Year for the #1 R&B ballad "I Live for Your Love". The album garnered her three major hit singles: "Jump Start," "I Live For Your Love" (#2 AC and #13 Pop as well as #1 R&B), and a successful remake of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac" (#5 Pop, #16 AC, and #1 Dance). The album also included a remake of one of her father's signature hits, "When I Fall In Love," which did moderately well on the AC chart.
In 1989, another album, Good To Be Back gave her another chart success "Miss You Like Crazy" (#1 both R&B and AC, and #7 Pop).

Career detour and resurgence
Cole may be best remembered for her 1991 album, Unforgettable... with Love, featuring her own arrangements of her father's greatest hits. Ironically, during her early career, Cole was reluctant to capitalize on her father's name, and wanted to forge her own identity by going after the soul market in earnest. For many years, she also found the prospect of recording her late father's songs too painful on a personal level.
Her decision to record the songs was a chart success; the album sold over 5 million copies in the United States alone, and won Cole several Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. The album featured a duet, the title track, with her father, created by splicing a recording of his vocals into the track. As a single, it reached #14 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 chart, and went gold.

Unforgettable...with Love
Cole has released several more albums of pop standards in the years since; as a result of appealing to the "adult standards" audience, she has made only occasional forays onto the pop singles charts in that time (for example, "A Smile Like Yours" in 1997), although her albums still sell well. Cole is considered one of the core artists of the smooth jazz format, garnering frequent airplay on smooth jazz radio stations with both her classic songs and her newer material.
In 1995 she performed in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True a musical performance of the popular story at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television (TNT), and issued on CD and video in 1996.
Her 1999 album Snowfall On The Sahara marked a return to the easy adult-contemporary soul that categorized her late-1980s hits, but for 2002's critically-praised Ask A Woman Who Knows, she turned more to the jazz side of the spectrum, covering songs made famous by Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Sarah Vaughan.
In September 2006, she released "Leavin'", a cover album of tracks made popular by Shelby Lynne, Kate Bush, Sting, and Fiona Apple, among others; the album is a hybrid of rock, pop music, and R&B.

Additional albums
Cole has carved out a secondary career in acting. She has also appeared several times in live concerts or other music related programs, including the 1988 Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute with sidemen Richard Campbell, Jeffrey Worrell, Eddie Cole and Dave Joyce. After Johnny Mathis appeared on a special of Cole's in 1980, the two kept in contact, and in 1992, he invited Cole to be a part of his television special titled "A Tribute To Nat Cole" for BBC-TV in England. It had high viewer ratings and was successful. From that project, an album with the same name was released, and featured several medley and solo numbers.
Cole has made a number of dramatic appearances on television, including guest appearances on I'll Fly Away, Touched by an Angel, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2006, she made a memorable guest appearance on the popular ABC show Grey's Anatomy as a terminally ill patient. Her character visited Seattle Grace Hospital to have a fork removed from her neck that her husband had stabbed her with during a mishap; the couple had been having an intimate encounter in public.
On the February 5, 2007, episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Cole sang I Say a Little Prayer at a benefit dinner for Harriet Hayes (played by Sarah Paulson).
She can also be seen in the last scene of rapper NaS' latest music video, Can't Forget About You. The song uses a sample of Cole's late father Nat King Cole's song, Unforgettable. Cole is sitting at a piano in a cabaret-style lounge singing her father's song with NaS standing beside her, sharing the moment.

Television and film
In 2000, Cole released an autobiography, Angel on my Shoulder, which described her battle with drugs during much of her life.
In concert with the release of the book, her autobiography was turned into a made-for-TV movie, The Natalie Cole Story, which aired December 10, 2000 on NBC.'

In the book, Cole admitted to using LSD, heroin and crack cocaine.
Cole said she began experimenting with drugs while attending the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
She also disclosed that she was arrested in Toronto, Canada for possession of heroin in 1975.
Cole continued to spiral out of control - including one incident where she refused to evacuate a burning building, and another where her young son Robert nearly drowned in the family swimming pool while she and her first husband, the late Reverend Marvin Yancy, were on a drug binge. Substance abuse and recovery

Discography
Inseparable
Natalie
Unpredictable
Thankful
Natalie...Live!
I Love You So
We're The Best Of Friends (with Peabo Bryson)
Don't Look Back
Happy Love
I'm Ready
Dangerous
Everlasting
The Collection
Good To Be Back
Unforgettable... with Love
Take A Look
Holly & Ivy
Stardust
This Will Be - Natalie Cole's Everlasting Love
Snowfall On The Sahara
The Magic Of Christmas
Greatest Hits Vol. 1
Love Songs
Ask A Woman Who Knows
Anthology
Leavin'
Love Songs (Re-issue)

Released: May 11, 1975
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: US Pop #18, R&B #1
RIAA Certification: Gold
Singles: "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)", "Inseparable"
Released: April 9, 1976
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: US Pop #13, R&B #3
RIAA Certification: Gold
Singles: "Sophisticated Lady (She's A Different Lady)", "Mr. Melody"
Released: February 1977
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: US Pop #8, R&B #1
RIAA Certification: Platinum
Singles: "I've Got Love On My Mind", "Party Lights"
Released: November 16, 1977
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: US Pop #16, R&B #5
RIAA Certification: Platinum
Singles: "Our Love", "Annie Mae"
Released: June 13, 1978
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: US Pop #31, R&B #9
RIAA Certification: Gold
Singles: "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"
Released: March 19, 1979
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: US Pop #52, R&B #11
RIAA Certification: Gold
Singles: "Stand By", "Sorry", "The Winner"
Released: November 15, 1979
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: US Pop #44, R&B #7
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "Gimme Some Time", "What You Won't Do For Love"
Released: May 15, 1980
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: US Pop #77, R&B #17
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "Someone That I Used To Love", "Hold On"
Released: August 13, 1981
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: US Pop #132, R&B #37
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "You Were Right Girl", "Nothing But A Fool"
Released: August 12, 1983
Label: Epic
Chart Peak: US Pop #182, R&B #54
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "Too Much Mister", "I Won't Deny You"
Released: May 23, 1985
Label: Modern / ATCO
Chart Peak: US Pop #140, R&B #48
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "Dangerous", "A Little Bit Of Heaven", "Secrets"
Released: June 14, 1987
Label: EMI-Manhattan / Elektra (Re-issue)
Chart Peak: US Pop #42, R&B #8, UK #62
RIAA Certification: Gold
Singles: "Jump Start", "I Live For Your Love", "Everlasting", "Pink Cadillac", "When I Fall In Love"
Released: July 7, 1987
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: N/A
RIAA Certification: N/A
Released: May 2, 1989
Label: EMI-Manhattan / Elektra (Re-issue)
Chart Peak: US Pop #59, R&B #21, UK #10
RIAA Certification: Platinum
Singles: "Miss You Like Crazy", "I Do", "Starting Over Again", "As A Matter Of Fact"
Released: September 10, 1991
Label: Elektra
Chart Peak: US Pop #1 (5 weeks), R&B #5, Jazz #1, UK #11
RIAA Certification: 8x Platinum
Singles: "Unforgettable", "Route 66", "The Very Thought Of You"
Released: June 8, 1993
Label: Elektra
Chart Peak: US Pop #26, R&B #14, Jazz #1, UK #16
RIAA Certification: Gold
Singles: "Take A Look", "As Time Goes By"
Released: October 25, 1994
Label: Elektra
Chart Peak: US Pop #36, R&B #20
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "No More Blue Christmas"
Released: September 24, 1996
Label: Elektra
Chart Peak: US Pop #20, R&B #11
RIAA Certification: Gold
Singles: "When I Fall In Love"
Released: June 3, 1997
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: N/A
RIAA Certification: N/A
Released: June 22, 1999
Label: Elektra
Chart Peak: US Pop #163, R&B #64
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "Snowfall On The Sahara", "Say You Love Me"
Released: September 21, 1999
Label: Elektra
Chart Peak: US Pop #157, R&B #84
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "The Christmas Song"
Released: November 7, 2000
Label: Elektra
Chart Peak: US Pop #154, R&B #86
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "A Smile Like Yours", "Angel On My Shoulder", "Livin' For Love"
Released: July 24, 2001
Label: Elektra / Rhino
Chart Peak: N/A
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "A Smile Like Yours", "Angel On My Shoulder", "Livin' For Love"
Released: September 17, 2002
Label: Verve
Chart Peak: US Pop #32, R&B #24, Jazz #1
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "Tell Me All About It", "Better Than Anything (with Diana Krall)"
Released: April 8, 2003
Label: Capitol
Chart Peak: N/A
RIAA Certification: N/A
Released: September 26, 2006
Label: Verve
Chart Peak: US Pop #97, R&B #16
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "Day Dreamin'"
Released: January 30, 2007
Label: Rhino
Chart Peak: N/A
RIAA Certification: N/A
Singles: "A Smile Like Yours", "Angel On My Shoulder", "Livin' For Love" Albums

Singles

80s

2000s

List of number-one dance hits (United States)
List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart