This Fire (album)

According to the RIAA, the album has gone double platinum, selling over two million copies in United States[3] and peaked at number 20 on the Billboard 200.

The second single, "I Don't Want to Wait" (1997), peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was later used as the theme song for The WB teen drama series Dawson's Creek, which ran from 1998 to 2003.

Reviewing for Entertainment Weekly in December 1996, Beth Johnson regarded This Fire as a departure from the "sweet safeness" of Cole's debut album Harbinger, while calling her "a feisty poet with a soaring voice and a funky groove, [who] seems to be nipping at Tori Amos' heels".

[7] Critic Glenn McDonald "presciently declared Cole the new queenpin of a female tradition he traced from Kate Bush through Peter Gabriel, Melissa Etheridge, and Sarah McLachlan.

"[8] Appraising the album as merely a "subpeak" of the female-identified genre, Christgau wrote in The Village Voice: "Where Kate Bush overwhelms petty biases as inexorably as Led Zep, Cole is just a romantic egotist who can't resist turning ordinary human problems into three-act dramas.