Overview

Image from the music video.

"Cold Hearted" is a single from Paula Abdul's album Forever Your Girl, written and produced by Elliot Wolff.  The song was co-produced by Keith “K.C.” Cohen.

The song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the album's third song to top the US chart.

"Cold Hearted" topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week in September 1989, and ranked sixth in the "Top 100 hits of 1989". It spent a total of eight weeks on the Billboard Top 10.

A "Cold Hearted" remix was the final UK release from Forever Your Girl in 1990. In the US and elsewhere, an edit of the album version was released instead. It charted on September 29,1990 at #55, and peaked at #46 the following week.

The “Cold Hearted” remix was the follow-up to the Shep Pettibone remix of "Knocked Out" which had reached #21 three months previously.

Image from the film "All That Jazz".

Growing up as a child Paula idolized people such as Gene Kelly and Liza Minnelli. (She was even lucky enough to meet them as a child.) Another person who Paula idolized was the legendary choreographer Bob Fosse.

Paula's inspiration for the “Cold Hearted” music video was from one of Bob Fosse’s dance sequences in “All That Jazz”. Fosse also directed Broadway favorites such as “Cabaret”, “All That Jazz” and “Sweet Charity.”

The music video depicts Paula making fun of record label executives. The scenery includes scaffolding upon which Abdul and her dancers hang and grind. The video was directed by David Fincher and spent more than three weeks on top of MTV's video rotation list.

In a PEOPLE Magazine article Bob Fosse once commented on Paula Abdul’s choreography. “He said that he admired my style as a young choreographer, and how I have unpredictability in my choreography — the ability to turn right when everyone expects me to turn left. It was the biggest compliment I ever received”, said Paula. Fosse died in 1987.

Image from the music video.

According to songwriter/producer Elliot Wolff, the video for Cold Hearted incorrectly depicts violin players playing the instrument in the middle of the video when in fact the music you hear is not actually a violin but keyboard synthesizers.

The video has been released commercially on VHS and DVD and is also available for download on the U.S. iTunes store.

In the Season 2 premiere episode of Lip Sync Battle, Paula joined Jenna Dewan-Tatum on stage for a reenactment of the "Cold Hearted" music video.  The performance has received over 11 million views since it was uploaded to YouTube.