Tiger

Album: This Fire (1996)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Cole unleashing her inner beast, free from the strictures of her small-town upbringing no longer contending with "sex-starved teachers trying to touch my ass."

    Cole was class president and a top student growing up in Rockport, Massachusetts, but she wasn't satisfied. "I wanted to break free from my self-imposed good girl expectations," she said in a Songfacts interview. "I was a bit of a repressed goody two-shoes, you see, and I needed to bust out of that in my 20s and I needed to rebel."
  • This is an important song for Cole, with a regular spot on her setlists. When she returned in 2007 after a seven-year absence with the album Courage, it included a song called "14," with the line, "The mighty tiger doesn't blink."

    Cole also used "Tiger" to open her 2016 live album This Bright Red Feeling, recorded at The City Winery in New York City. The album title comes from a line in the song.
  • The album title comes from a line in the song: "Where do I put this fire?"

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