With the return of the summer holidays come new projects as well. The singer and actress Natalie Imbruglia (Sydney, 51 years old) has released her seventh studio album, Algorithm, after five years of silence and many changes in her life. The performer of Torn, her late nineties hit that has since earned her international fame, released her new album on September 4 and, in full promotion, has spoken about what she experienced while preparing it. Not only that, she has also sung about it, for example in one of the 12 songs that make up this work, Who Dimmed The Lights, in which she talks about her perimenopause (which began approximately five years ago) and how it affected her mental health.
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“It was really tough,” she explained in an interview with the BBC: “Perimenopause is not just about hormones. It has to do with the mind. The brain needs estrogen to function, so when levels fluctuate, it affects spatial perception,” added the singer, who also assured that “I had never walked into so many doors. Mental confusion is quite disconcerting.”
According to the artist’s explanation to the British media, mood swings were not the only problem. In her case, this phase prior to menopause, which coincided with the making of Algorithm and began to affect her during the tour of her previous work, Firebird (2021), had a direct impact on her attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). She told the BBC that she experienced increased anger and anxiety that affected her during concerts and, specifically, in dealing with her team and the people around her: “You start to see on others’ faces an expression like: ‘What’s wrong with you?’. I saw that face very often, and it has to do with your ability to process [information]. You have less patience.”
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As she told the British channel in the interview, things got even worse during that tour, when her stage fright got out of control and she had “terrible, terrible” anxiety. “I become sensitive to sound, so even if someone is talking to me normally, I feel like they are shouting,” explained Imbruglia, who assures: “I can’t process questions well. I get nervous and behave strangely; and it seems to have worsened with perimenopause.” Her behavior became a “nightmare” for her team and, to illustrate it, she recounts: “If you asked me if I want water with or without gas, I would say: ‘That’s a question, and right now I can’t answer questions.’”
In another recent interview with The Telegraph, the singer said she eventually gave up: “Before a concert I came in and said [to her team]: ‘Guys, I’m going to have to quit.’” As the British newspaper reported, Imbruglia managed to overcome a difficult stage after starting cognitive-behavioral therapies and hormone replacement, before writing what she has described as her “maturity album.”
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The performer publicly revealed her adult diagnosis of ADHD and OCD during an interview with The Times last July: “They are just labels. It’s not something negative, it’s my superpower. But there is one specific aspect of my neurodiversity that I find hard to accept, and that is how I get when I’m nervous before a concert. Perimenopause has made it worse.”
After leaving her job as an actress on the television series Neighbours — the Australian version of Beverly Hills, 90210 — Imbruglia moved to the United Kingdom and became famous as a singer thanks to the song Torn, from 1997, a cover of a song by the Californian band Ednaswap. This anthem to broken hearts, included in her album Left of the Middle — also the most successful of her career — reached number one in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and Canada, and earned her a Grammy nomination in 1999. On that album, she connected with mid-nineties female rock lovers, alongside other singers like Alanis Morissette and Joan Osborne. Thanks to that first single and Big Mistake, the next single, she managed to carve out her own place in international pop.
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In January 2003, she announced her engagement to fellow Australian Daniel Johns, leader of the group Silverchair. But in January 2008, four years after marrying in a beach ceremony, the couple publicly announced the end of their marriage through a statement: “We simply drifted apart because we lived in different parts of the world for years,” they cited as reasons for their breakup. Years later, in July 2019, she herself revealed via her Instagram profile (now with 845,000 followers) that she had become pregnant through in vitro fertilization: “I am expecting my first child this fall. For those who know me, this is something I have wanted for a long time and I feel lucky that it was possible thanks to in vitro fertilization and a sperm donor; I will not say anything more about it publicly,” she shared then. In October of that year, also via Instagram, she announced the birth of her son, Max Valentine Imbruglia.
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