Song of the Day 4/13: Paula Cole, “I Don’t Want to Wait”

Yet another Trump stunt to delay his hush-money trial got rejected yesterday, so it’s almost certain to start Monday. Almost certain. The title of this song sums up my feelings on the matter.

Paula Cole burned briefly but brightly in 1997, when two singles from “This Fire,” her self-produced second album, scaled the Billboard charts. “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” reached No. 8 and was nominated for three Grammy Awards. Its follow-up, “I Don’t Want to Wait,” stalled at No. 11 but stayed on the Hot 100 for over a year, boosted when the teen TV soap “Dawson’s Creek” used it as its theme song. Cole said she wrote it about her grandparents, who lived down the street when she was a girl. “When you grow up with your grandparents you can really see the generations and the energy of the parenting,” she said. “I was looking at it and thinking, ‘I don’t want to make some of these mistakes. I really hope I don’t’.”

Her follow-up album was a stylistic departure but a commercial flop, and she took nearly a decade off to raise a daughter. She returned to performing on a much smaller scale and has released several albums independently. She’s touring this summer behind her latest LP, “Lo.” This is the single she released from it late last year, an homage to her musical mentor, Mark Hutchins, who introduced her to the bands in the title.