Natalie Cole- This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another blog post. Today I am writing about the fantastic artist that is Natalie Cole. Growing up, I heard a lot of Natalie's songs through movies. Her music has a level of enthusiasm that lifts your spirits and perfectly fits any happy scene in a movie. Natalie was born in Los Angeles, CA, to legendary singer and jazz pianist Nat King Cole. Having a famous musician like her father exposed Natalie to the music world. When Natalie was six years old, she sang on her father's Christmas album: The Magic of Christmas, and started to perform when she was eleven. Although Natalie had an early start in music, she didn't do anything significant until she graduated college in 1972 and started a band called Black Magic. The band played in small clubs and would mostly get invited to play because of her father, but clubs were upset when the band only played R&B and rock covers. Natalie was able to record demos that led to a contract with Capital Records and released an album called: Inseparable. The album featured the song This Will Be, a huge success winning her a Grammy award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. Natalie also won Best New Artist at the Grammy's, being the first African-American to receive it. In 1976 Natalie released her second album, Natalie. Many critics thought the album wouldn't be successful, but Natalie proved them wrong by having hits like Sophisticated Lady and Mr. Melody. Natalie's fame continued with her third and fourth album releases: Unpredictable (1977) and Thankful (1977), earning platinum status. Natalie has 23 studio albums from genres like R&B, pop, rock, and jazz. Throughout Natalie's life, she struggled with drug addiction and thought this led to her Hepatitis C diagnosis in 2008. At 65 years old, Natalie passed away on December 31, 2015, because of congestive heart failure. Natalie was such an incredible artist and brought much joy to people through her music.

For the song review, I will discuss Natalie's first big hit: This Will Be (An Everlasting Love). Chuck Jackson and Martin Yancy wrote this song. The song begins with a beautiful piano that gives this whole warm feeling. I love the brass section in the song. It provides the song with power and blends well with Natalie's vocals. My favorite part of the song is the background vocals. I love the harmony they offer, making the whole piece sound even better. The song's structure is interesting because there are no definite verses or chorus when you look at the lyrics. It almost seems like it's written in AAA format with the tagline at the end. This means that the song is all different verses but has the "chorus" at the end of the verse. The only thing is that there seems to be a B part or bridge section in the fourth verse when she sings, "You brought a lot of sunshine into my life." The instruments change to playing fast staccato notes, providing something new to the song. The fifth is the song's climax; Natalie is singing falsetto and sounds amazing. I have no clue how she sounds so good. If you are not dancing or bobbing your head, there is something wrong with you. I love how Natalie sings the lines "Hugging and squeezing and kissing and pleasing. Together, forever, through rain or whatever." It's so powerful and gives me chills every single time. The song ends with Natalie's vocals still in falsetto and the band blazing behind her as they fade to finish the song.

I hope you all liked this blog post. Please give it a thumbs up and feel free to comment below, and make sure you share this post! As always, links to the music are below.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ETYI6A3dsOe9fJTBQVWg8?si=34f737d62e824d04

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCWucz28xBIFSXuR4JkTdVMJQe8MHjPne

Chief Editor: Jacob Tomeny