I Don't Want to Wait (Artist's 20th Anniversary Edition)

In a 2016 Songfacts interview with Paula Cole, she talked about the meaning behind "I Don't Want To Wait." Said Cole: "It's a very personal song that's looking at my grandparents, specifically my grandfather, Everett, who fought in World War II, his unhappy marriage to my grandmother - the firecracker, Helen - their influence on my father and then that influence on me. When you grow up with your grandparents you can really see the generations and the energy of the parenting. I was looking at it and thinking, 'I don't want to make some of these mistakes. I really hope I don't.' Wanting to take that Atlas globe off of my shoulders that felt like each female generation was passing, like you have to just stay married, you can't be happy, you can't have a career. I just wanted to shrug it off and I wanted happiness for my life, my generation. Of course, I go about making all kinds of different mistakes in reaction to that and ironically I come back to my hometown and full circle of living by my parents now, with my daughter. So, that song follows me. It's a song from my life. I think about my family in it, I think about generations, the way they've informed my dad and me, but really I wrote it for my grandfather and I feel like his spirit is still in that song. The song has wings - the spirit is in that song."

Cole's debut album Harbinger was released in 1994 and did fairly well, earning her a spot opening for Sarah McLachlan. This Fire was her second album; it took off when radio stations started playing the first single, "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?," which reached #8 in May 1997. That summer, McLachlan brought Cole along on the Lilith Fair, which gave her a lot more exposure. "I Don't Want To Wait" was her second single; it slowly climbed the chart and reached #11 in January 1998, shortly before it was chosen as the theme song for the new TV series Dawson's Creek. The show drew solid ratings and attracted a fervent fan base of teenage girls. It stayed on the air for six years, with about 40 seconds of this song playing before every episode.

The song got on Dawson's Creek because the show's creator, Kevin Williamson, was a fan of Cole's and asked to use it. "We had no idea that it would be such a hit that it would usurp the brand name that was Paula Cole. We had no idea it was going to be so huge," she told Songfacts. "It was unusual at the time for a show to use an existing hit, and it just took over. It gave it a new life for another younger generation and that generation wasn't aware of the fact that I had had a career before that, really. So, it's been up to them to discover it via the internet, I guess."