The ultimate Pop Tooon? Well, I don’t guess any song can claim that title, but Imbruglia’s version of Torn is one of those insanely catchy pop confections that come along every now and then to tickle an indefinable but almost universal musical sweet spot, appealing to just about everybody save the tone-deaf and terminally grumpy. I bet they knew they’d caught lightning in a bottle the minute they had it in the can, before they unleashed it on the world. Sometimes you just know. When the Beatles were finished laying down Please Please Me in the studio, George Martin leaned over the microphone in the producer’s booth and told them “congratulations, gentlemen, you’ve just recorded your first #1”. Torn is that sort of song. Play it anywhere, anytime, and toes will start a-tappin’, and it’ll be smiles all around. Hard to believe it hit the airwaves way back in 1997; to these ears, anyway, it never gets old. I don’t think it will ever go away, and I don’t think it ever should.
It wasn’t Natalie’s song, much as she made it her own. It was written in 1991 by Scott Cutler, Phil Thornalley, and Anne Preven, members of an obscure group called Ednaswap, whose version had hard edges that Imbruglia later polished smooth. Have a listen – I think it might grow on you:
It’s good, but it’s not quite there, is it? There was also a version released in Danish, by Lis Sørensen, and then another by American-Norwegian singer Trine Rein, but neither of those was about to catch fire in the English speaking world, besides which they were both still missing that certain little something. So it floated around for a few years, largely unnoticed, until suddenly Torn was everywhere, and inescapable. Imbruglia had brought it to life in a way nobody else had managed, not even its composers, and the listening public went wild for it. It topped the Billboard airplay charts for 14 straight weeks.
The theme is pretty straightforward: girl meets boy, girl thinks boy is The One, girl then realizes nope, boy is actually awful. Anne Previn put it this way:
This song is about a woman who thought she found the perfect man, only to find out he was Mr. Wrong all along. To say she is taking it hard is an understatement: she’s so upset that she ends up cold, shamed, lying naked on the floor.
The accompanying video is curious, yet somehow affecting and eminently watchable (Imbruglia was an actor prior to this, playing a role in the Australian soap Neighbours, and the camera loves her). It seems to portray the way that people find it so hard to form meaningful connections, continually harassed, as they are, by outside forces, and hobbled by their own inability to communicate. Or something like that. Incredibly, then 22-year-old Imbruglia selected her own nondescript, loose fitting wardrobe because at the time she felt she was tubby and altogether homely. Interviewed in 2022, she confessed that she was “so body dysmorphic and insecure…The army pants weren’t even cool army pants – they weren’t in fashion or anything. My intention in wearing them was so that you couldn’t see my silhouette, because I didn’t want anyone to see”.
Can you imagine? What in the world are we doing to women’s minds?
Torn was by no means the only thing worth hearing on her debut album, Left of the Middle. I’ve always been fond of the self-composed title track:
…but nothing, of course, will ever eclipse Torn in the public consciousness, a song so everlasting in its appeal that 27 years on, Spotify reports 500 million streams, and counting.
Artists often grow weary of the signature Big Hit Songs that they have to perform at every concert, over and over, as long as they live, but if Natalie feels that way about Torn she gives no sign of it. Here she is with a nice, stripped down version from a couple of years ago:
She also does a lovely version of Neil Finn’s superb Don’t Dream it’s Over. The lady has taste.
the needlefish 