60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Torn”—Natalie Imbruglia

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Rob looks back at his days in a band while diving into cover songs and Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn.” Later, he is joined by Sophie B. Hawkins to discuss her hit “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” as well as “Torn.” Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Sophie B. Hawkins Producers: Justin Sayles and Jonathan Kermah Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to Power Pot pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. Summer 1996. The summer between high school, and college, that mythic liminal space, that caught breath, that split second in Layla by Derek and the Domino's before the piano comes in, or the split second in November rain by Guns and Roses, before the piano comes back in, that teenage purgatory, that Dionysian waiting room,

that blank page in some copies of the Bible between the Old Testament and the New Testament, A singular, unrepeatable, indescribable, ecstatically transitional moment. Like you're stuck on the Street Fighter 2 character selection screen for three months, but it's cool, man. These are all aggressively for descriptions of the summer between high school and college, which I elected to spend in a light stupor. Not a drug or alcohol-induced stupor per se, but I was quite aggressively at my leisure. should say I didn't have a whole lot on my mind. I did attempt to impersonate a productive member of society. I bagged groceries poorly for $5.25 an hour, or perhaps by then I'd moved on to working the

produce department poorly. I used to take a Sharpie and draw amusing faces on all the butternut squash and then leave them scattered throughout the grocery store, hiding out amid the salad dressing and whatnot where my dear friend Mike would find them while he stocked shelves. It was hilarious. Not a lot going on, not a lot on my mind. And then somebody selected a character for me. Bassist. My buddy Jeremy materializes one day out of the mist. And he says, can you play bass?

And I go, And he says, I started this band. We need a bass player. I got this bass and this bass amp right here. Suspiciously, you think you're going to learn to play bass? And I go, and he says, all right, you're in. And suddenly I was in a band.

Through no initiative of my own, I didn't even use words. But so next thing you know, Jeremy's picking me up for band to practice. We get on the highway, we drive five minutes up the highway to the next suburb. One of those deals, we get off the highway, we pass that suburbs, Denny's. We turn it to a totally unfamiliar and yet absolutely familiar subdivision of suburban-ass houses. We pull up at the drummer's house. The drummer is asleep in his bedroom, which is in the basement. So he's got one of those high, tiny, rectangular windows that looks out onto the lawn at ground level.

So he can look out and see just grass and maybe somebody's shoes. Whereas from the outside, we can crouch down and peer in and just see a sleeping drummer. It's like noon. We can also see the sleeping drummer's iguana or snake or something, some reptile or another chilling in a terrarium. We bang on the drummer's window for 20 minutes. He awakes. He groans. He lets us in the house. He groans a lot more. He leads us down to the basement where his drums are set up. Four guys in this band. My buddy Jeremy is singing and playing guitar. We got Jason, the lead guitarist. We got Mike. Another mic. He's the drummer. And we got me, I guess. And I plug in the bass that is

at mine into the bass amp that is at mine and start playing an instrument I'd never played on a song I'd never heard. Sonic Reducer by the Dead Boys. From their 1977 debut album, Young, Loud and Snoddy, fantastic album titles. The Dead Boys are from Cleveland. I'm from Cleveland.

We have that in common, The Dead Boys and I. And that's just about going to do it. I do feel a great sense of tenderness toward myself in this moment, trying to play all those bass notes. I got a guitar pick. I'm downstroking,

furiously. It's quite a stressful situation. Jeremy, our frontman to his credit, he's written some pretty good punky, poppy, rocky songs. He's got quite a few romantic crushes to process, as do we all. But we attempt quite a few cover songs. And here we start with one of those cover songs. Although, I may have neglected to mention, we're not covering the originally recorded Dead Boys version of Sonic Reducer. We are covering Pearl Jam's cover of of the Dead Boys Sonic Reducer. Yes, the fabled cover of a cover. Any lousy suburban basement rock band can cover a song,

but it takes true vision to cover a cover song. That shit is postmodern. But regardless of whether you're playing an original or a cover or a postmodern cover of a cover, I'm here to tell you, friends, that no song you will ever hear in your life, under any circumstances, will sound better to you

than the first song you play together with your first band. It is the sweetest and raddest music you will ever hear. When I get a little bit more confidence, which is to say when I get overconfident, I'll start throwing in a funky little bass fill there, but not the first time. Does this first song your first band is playing sound good to anybody else or sound good in any objective sense?

No. oh it sounds very bad indeed it is objectively terrible music but not to you to you it is the sweetest and raddest music you will ever hear and it will remain so for the rest of your life we played for a few hours that day and then my wrists got super sore and my fingertips hurt a lot and so he stopped and retired to the drummer's living room for some bonding and relaxation this band will last a couple years i loved these guys a lot and it turns out that that our favorite post-practice bonding activity, other than going to Denny's, was playing Parapa the Rapper on the drummer's PlayStation. Punch it's all in the mind. If you want to test me, I'll see you'll find the things I'll teach you.

You'll be sure to beat you. Nevertheless, you get a lesson from teacher. Now kick. Kick. Kick. The Rapper is a musical game, a rhythm game, where you hit the buttons in a precise and pleasing rhythm. Certainly you recall that the Parapa the rapper character

rapping there is named Chop Chop Master Onion. He's in a dojo. He's got an onion for a head with stink lines above it. He's got a Foo Manchu mustache. This is to this day the weirdest fucking video game I've ever played in my life

and I love it. The band rehearses for weeks. The bassist, that's me now, gross calluses on his fingertips so they don't hurt so much. The band's got a gig. The gig is a battle of the bands at a nearby annual summer county fair festival situation, which is called old-fashioned days. I couldn't tell you what constituted old-fashioned days in a suburb of Cleveland in 1996. The festival offered plentiful

jobs in the steel industry. Perhaps we play the battle of the bands in a little open-air tent near the elementary school, right? The crowd is modest. The band, that's us, is less modest. We open our set with a cover of a cover of Sonic Reducer, and we close our set with this. I'm gonna be parentheses 500 miles, a delightful 1988 hit by the Scottish twin brother duo The Proclaimers, but ah, once again, we are not covering the Proclaimers original version

of I'm gonna be parentheses 500 miles. We are covering the LA punk rock band Down by Laws cover. Postmodern! The set list of the first show ever From My First Band Ever Begins and ends with a cover of a cover. I am delighted by that. To this day, I am alone, apparently.

In my delight, we do not win the Battle of the Bands. We do not win the Battle of the Bands, despite including a third cover song, this cover song, a mere cover of an original song, so pedestrian, unimaginative. That's the bad news. The good news is it was a cover of a walk by bad religion. This song kicks ass. Our version of this song kicks substantially less ass, but fewer asses. But even one one thousandth of an ass kicking is a non-zero amount of ass kicking. Also, during our live debut of our cover of this song, our lead guitarist, who up to this point has expressed no interest in singing.

He has not brought up even the idea of backing vocals at any point. Now, on stage, while we're playing our first show ever, while we're debuting our cover of a walk, he strides up to the front of the stage. And I remember this so clearly. Time slowed to a crawl as I watched in confusion and amazement as he saunters up to a live mic in a stand during the chorus, and he plants his feet,

and he rises up on tiptoe and he summons all his artistic might every musical lesson he's ever learned kick punch it's all in the mind and he brings his mouth up to the mic and he unleashes just the most gruesome series of discordant musical notes in the godless history

of Western civilization he's trying to do the harmonies right there I assume and I love that part and I respect the ambition but yo just the wheezing lamentations of a dying animal whose death will constitute the extinction of its species, a Frankenstein sonata.

It sounded the way it would sound if you shot an accordion at point blank range with a shotgun while the accordion player was still playing it. Obviously, you didn't shoot the accordion player. So, like, you're standing slightly behind the accordion player's left shoulder. and you just go, blam, and blow a giant hole in that fucker, but the accordion player is still going, I'm not saying that's why we lost this battle of the bands,

but I do want to reiterate that we lost. I have neglected until now to tell you the name of our band. At this point, I neglected to do so on purpose, as our original band name was very bad, and not funny bad. When I joined this band, and let me reiterate that they name this band

before I joined it with no input from me whatsoever. Our original name was choice point counseling. Three words. I swear to God, I have no explanation for this. I don't think I even ever asked them what the deal was with that. I just Googled Choice Point Counseling and it's a therapy center in yet another suburb of Cleveland. It's near an olive garden.

I'm at a loss here. Honestly, I love that band. I love those guys. I got to reconnect with those guys. Facebook and whatnot. I apologize to the guitarist who was a super rad dude for clowning him for the first and last time he tried to sing. That's rude. He was a much better musician than I was. I had an awesome time. We played like 10 shows in two years. We changed our name to dimmer, as in more dim. Not bad. Very mid-90s band name. We played a few more battles of the bands.

We lost those as well. During our set once at an actual club in downtown Cleveland, P-Bodies down under, if you're familiar, for like the 20 minutes in the 90s where mushroom head weren't playing, Peabody's down under. I watched a guy cross the entire floor of the club while we were playing to karate kick another dude in the front row. Probably the most impressive act of violence I've ever witnessed in person. It was like something out of Rumble in the Bronx. I stopped playing and everybody else in the band yelled at me and so I started playing again. We played a biker bar that one of my seedy or uncles described to me as a punch palace. I had never heard that term before or since.

Punch Palace. It just means a place with a lot of fights, but not the night we played because we cleared that fucking place out. Occasionally, during practice, the drummer's father would come home and make us stop playing immediately. Like, one time he opened the door to the basement,

he walked halfway down the basement stairs, and we saw him and stopped playing whatever song we were playing, and he just said, I've heard enough and walk back upstairs and that was the end of practice that day and of course then there was only one thing left to do

I want you to show me if you can get far step for the guy this is the second level of Parapper the rapper he's taking his driver's test the hood of the car flies off immediately and his driving instructor is a rapping lady

moose whose name and I double check this several times Her name is Instructor Mussolini. Musilini spelled like Moose. That's, you know. I don't know if the phrase too soon applies to that or not. You know, among the many life lessons, my first band taught me. It taught me the power, the energy, the conferred and perhaps even magnified glory of a good cover song or cover of

cover song. I'm not saying we ourselves, the band formerly known as Choice Point Counseling, ever improved upon any of the songs we covered or the covers we covered, but the idea that we brought our own spin, our own life experiences, our own personality to a pre-existing song. Even if that personality took the form of some surprise, atonal, warbling backing vocals, it gave me a newfound and lifelong respect for songwriting and for the delicate art of availing yourself of someone else's songwriting. A good cover song, you know, a great one, a surprising one. A cover song so great and so crafty, so infused with personality, and so dominant, it apparently shocks millions of people to find out it's a cover song at all.

My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 89th episode of 60 Songs that explain the 90s in this week. We are talking about Torn by Australian pop star Natalie Ambrose. The episode last week I started talking about the song immediately, and I felt super weird about it. And this time, I may have overcompensated for getting to the point too quickly last time. I apologize to you for that as well. That's such a beautiful line there, isn't it? Both hyper-real and just slightly surreal. Illusion never changed into something real.

I'm wide awake, and I can see the perfect sky is torn. That's beautiful. It's a cover. surprise surprise maybe you're not surprised probably not at this point there was a weird moment in 2017 where a random Twitter user named

Volinsky Conjik tweeted and this is a great tweet actually every 90s kid comes of age three times 18th birthday 21st birthday the day they find out that Natalie and Brulia's version of Torn is a cover end quote and that tweet went viral

enough that it got aggregated a bunch, right, where various culture sites are like, did you know Natalie and Bruey is torn as a cover? And they embed the original tweet and then a bunch of replies freaking out. My life was built on a foundation of lies and whatnot. Content. Internet content. I love internet content. Who among us has not enjoyed or perhaps even generated that sort of internet content. I aggregated many a tweet in my younger days. The New York Post did that torn as a cover blog under the headline, The Terrible Secret behind one of the 90s greatest pop songs. And okay, terrible secret is pushing it, I think. It's a cover song. It wasn't secretly written by Dracula or Mussolini or something, but that's the post for you. That's the internet for you.

It's a cover of a cover of a cover of a cover. Actually, Natalie Mbrulia is torn, sort of technically. Okay, let's do this. Chronological order, here we go. Let's start actually with a guy named Phil Thorn Alley. Phil is English. Phil is one of the coolest dudes imaginable. Why is Phil?

One of the coolest dudes imaginable? This is Phil. This is Phil Thorn Alley playing double bass on The Love Cats. a 1983 single by the immortal goth pop band The Cure. Speaking to you as a bassist, I play a little bass myself. A few battles of the bands, no big deal that I've been around. I'm here to tell you that this baseline is rude as hell. Unbelievable.

Phil also produced The Cure's 1982 album Pornography. He spends a year and a half or so playing bass in The Cure. He's set for life, coolness-wise. But as we push into the 90s, Phil's in his 40s. and he's more of a songwriter now. He's writing songs in West Hampstead with two younger co-writers, Anne Previn and Scott Cutler, who are based in L.A. and are just starting up in alt-rock bands called Edna Swap.

One word, Edna Swap. The lore is that Anne had a nightmare that she was in a band called Edna Swap, and they got booed off stage, and so she woke up and started that band for real. That's Anne's vibe. Anne Scott and their cool friend, Phil are writing a song. It's 1992 or so. They got a drum loop going.

They are inspired, Phil will later say, by a drum loop in a recent big 1992 pop hit by a young singer-songwriter named Sophie B. Hawkins. And that song, which is also cool as hell, is called Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover. That's the drum loop. I regret to say that I don't think the title is Damn Exclamation Point, I Wish I Was Your Lover. That's too bad. No comma either, usually. It's just, damn, I wish I was your lover. still an amazing song title.

Sophie B. Hawkins, who was our guest this week. We'll be talking to her later. I am super psyched about this. Sophie is from New York City. She played percussion for a while for Brian Ferry from Roxy Music. Another notable, ridiculously cool Englishman. This is her first single from her first solo album, Tongues and Tales from 1992.

And when you heard that drum loop on the radio, you knew you were about to have the time of your fucking life. I bet Prince wishes he'd written this song. That's the nicest thing I can think of to say about any song by anybody, and that's what I will say about damn I wish I was your lover. This song felt ever so subtly transgressive for pop radio in 1992, which is a huge part of why I suspect Prince envied it. Talking in the New York Times in 92, Sophie says,

I consider myself omnisexual, really, if there's such a word. most songs that are coming out lately say, I'm a man, you're a woman, it's black and white, but it's so hard to deal with life that way. There are many things that humans can do to transform themselves, and sex is one of the biggest things. I learned all the things I am by being who I wasn't supposed to be, playing all the roles I wasn't supposed to play.

Before I allowed myself to be manly, sexually, I was embarrassed by being really womanly. Now I find it really fun to be everything. and it depends on who brings what out of me. End quote. We don't often jump to that sort of more personal talk immediately in this venue, but this song, if, say, just hypothetically, you were 14 years old and riding shotgun,

driving around with your mom, running to Kmart or whatever, and damn, I wish I was your lover, came on the radio, there was a subliminal but quite visceral sense that your car antenna had somehow picked, up the audio from somebody nearby watching Cinemax at 2.30 in the morning. In conclusion, phenomenal song. Just incredible. Okay, that song, that drum loop, that feel, that lushness, that explosive burst into the chorus. Starting in 2020, Phil Thorne Alley co-hosted a podcast for a little while called Songstripper, breaking down the songwriting process. And one of their first episodes was

him talking about Torn. And he said, had Sophie B. Hawkins on his mind as he and Anne and Scott sit down to write. Phil and Scott futs with the chords, Anne writes some lyrics. She does one rough vocal pass. They quit for the day, they reconvene the next day, Anne says, forget everything I

wrote and sang yesterday. I rewrote the whole song, it's called Torn now. And Phil's like, are you sure? And Anne's like, yeah. They finish the song. Anne and Scott take their new song back to their band Edna Swap and start kicking it around. But naturally, the very first thing

that happens to Torn is that it blows up in Denmark. Here we got Liz Sorensen, Danish pop star. That's Sorensen with one of them cool slashes through the first O. Love that. She's famous. She's on Instagram. She likes horses. But here it is 1993, and she's a decade into her famous pop star career already.

And this song is called Brent. B-R-A-E-N-D-T. It's one of those cool things with the A and the E squished together. I love that. Brent is Danish for Burned. That's just about going to do it for me speaking Danish. You don't want me out here speaking Danish. Trust me.

It's like a horse trying to play piano. You might find it amusing, but it don't end well for the piano. We have translated torn into Danish, obviously, but we've also rewritten it as burned. If we're relying on me to transcribe this song in Danish and then translate it into English, I wouldn't trust me to oversee that operation. I would just be reading you the English lyrics as provided by a random YouTube commenter. And with that disclaimer, what the hell? Because fear never gives in when fear lives in soul and body.

it blazes up so easily in the heart that was burned that's the pre-course we just heard all right Liz Sorensen let a rip a thousand times before by someone who promised all and closing his door shut

left me lying blue and burned a guy on YouTube says those are the lyrics in English I'm sold we don't get either I'm cold and I'm ashamed lying naked on the floor or our beloved I'm white awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn in this version, and that's too bad. Those lines must sound super terrible in Danish. Liz knows her business. This is 1993. If you even know what the

internet is hypothetically, you know that your computer makes a really scary noise as it's connecting to the internet. If you're an American raised in American pop radio and you have no direct pipeline to the pop star scene in Denmark, you got no idea. Brent exists. So, 1995, the Los Angeles alternative rock band Edna Swap releases their first album, self-titled. I am pleased to report that it rules. I love the high note there so much. This song is called Pale. Anne Previn is your lead singer.

There is a marvelous grit, a palpable snarl to Anne's voice. It's a fantastic mid-90s alt rock star voice. Dim, Dimmer, Dimmist. She has a diaphanine. hostility. Every chorus this woman sings is like a chainsaw through a birthday cake. That song is called minor crap. That's what it's called. I double checked that several times as well. This is a snarling underground rock band. This is not a band necessarily chasing pop stardom. However, you might define the term pop stardom in 1995. I could throw out a bunch of names of female fronted and distortion-minded

mid-90s rock bands if you want to orient yourself that way. Eves Plum, Varuca Salt, Garbage, whole bears mentioning, Alanis Morset, certainly bears mentioning. But that's reductive and a little embarrassing of me to go all women in rock on you. You know who I hear sometimes

quite clearly and gloriously on the first Edna Swap record in particular, Jane's Addiction. This song is called Moore. It is, to my mind, Edna Swap's mountain song. I do believe she's wide awake

and the perfect sky is torn. This first Edna Swap record is not on streaming services. As such, this is a YouTube or Discog situation. If you'd like to hear it now, and I do emphatically recommend that. It feels a little reductive in its own way for me to go

overboard here and say, this band should have been famous. Let's not get carried away. That's not up to me or you or for that matter of them. Nor is getting famous the goal, or for that matter a reliable indicator of quality, etc., etc. Listen, I'm walking around all day,

and this was true long before this show ever existed. I'm walking around with 5,000 random-ass 90s band names in my head. Bands I heard of, but never got around to listening to. Right? You want one here. Gorky's Zygotic

mincy, or Minkey. You ever see that band name? I've seen that band name. I got to get up on those guys. But so whether or not Ednaiswaffe, is one of those names for me or one of those names for you. Let's just say that my takeaway here is that it's worth actually investigating

a few of these random-ass band names from time to time. Okay, we got a little carried away there. Sorry, let's get down to business. 13 songs on the first Edna Swap record. This is track 12. He showed me what it was to cry. that extra little juz on the word dignified there, that's a cold cup of coffee.

Okay, here we have an Edna Swap song called Torn. Two people in this band, Anne and Scott wrote this song with a guy who used to be in The Cure. It's their song. A Danish lady already had a hit with this song, but under a different title, different lyrics on another continent. Circa 1995, Torn is a new, unsullied original song for all you know. And what I'd love to do. And genuinely, I'd pay like $20 to do this. I'd left for Will Smith or Tommy Lee Jones to zap me with a men in black memory eraser deal for just an hour so I could listen to the Edna Swap record from beginning to end just to see if I would immediately identify Torn.

Track 12 as a colossal blockbuster pop song waiting to happen. I'd like to think I would, even if in this hypothetical I'd never heard Torn before and had no idea anybody else would ever sing Torn. I'd like to think I'd be shrewd enough to hear the massive potential. There is a certain aura present here. This is a bigger, fluffier cake and a sharper chainsaw. Let's jump to the second pre-course, actually, because this always struck me as a beautiful line as well. I don't care.

I have no luck. I don't miss it all that much. I always really dug that. Torn is not some huge anomaly on this Edna Swap record. It's grimy. It's noisy. We got no acoustic guitar softening it up. In fact, back up. Here's what we got going on 10 seconds into the original torn. It just popped into my head that Pink, the pop star, Pink, get this party started and so what and so forth. She dangles from the ceiling on like scarves a lot. Pink really ought to cover this song. She's a pure pop star, but within 80s and 90s rock star voice and haircut and temperament.

let's say. Pink is precisely the midpoint between where torn is right this second and where torn will eventually be. But the song, the Edna Swap song, the original song, it's all undeniably there. The chorus is undeniably there. It would be rude for me to not play the Edna Swap chorus. And not the good rock and roll. That's what Pink would do, sort of rude. It's there. If Tommy Lee Jones or Will Smith had zapped you with the men in black memory eraser. Would you identify this in slightly different form as the chorus to the most played song on the radio in Australia for the last 30 years? I'd like to think you would. I have faith in you. The backing vocals. Right at the end, uh, that pops up here. If nothing else, I'd like to think this would have tipped you off

to how big this song could get. And then the song just sort of drifts away. for the last 45 seconds. If we're being critical, if we're getting all forensic, if we're aggressively charting the differences between the underground rock version and the blockbuster pop version of Torn, this version by Edna Swap ends the way track 12 on a 1995 rock album ends.

Not the way track one on a millions of copies selling 1997 pop album ends. But even that giant swooping guitar notes, Though not yet the slide guitar note, I suppose, even that is most of the way there here already. We're almost to Natalie, but we're not quite to Natalie. Before we get to Natalie, we got to make one more quick stop in Norway. He showed me what it was to cry. Here we have Norwegian pop star Trina Rain, T-R-I-N-R-E-R-E-N, Norwegian American.

She was born in San Francisco. from her second album, Beneath My Skin, from 1996, also her second straight number one album in Norway. Here we have Trina Rain with, well, it's torn. It's arguably more torn than the original torn, if that makes any sense. How about that? Beat that with a stick.

I have to say that much like our Danish friend, Liz Sorensen, Trina Rain also appears to like horses, or in any event horses really like and trust her. At this exact moment in the video for her version of Torn, Trina's holding the reins to two horses standing behind her, one in each hand, and she lifts her arms and both horses rear up majestically on their hind legs as the chorus hits. I'm tempted to say that's the most impressive stunt I've ever seen in a music video.

Full stop. I don't think I could do that. I don't think like Prince necessarily could have done that. On account of the tremendously impressive horse action, In this video, I will look more charitably upon the wah-wah guitar situation transpiring here, nor will I give Trina too much sass for literally wearing a veil and waving her hands over a crystal ball as she sings about the fortune teller. It's pretty good, right? It's pretty familiar, right?

Let's see how Trina handles the end of this. this song. I sure do hope a horse does something cool at the end of this song as well. Yes! More horse action! Right when the slide guitar hits, the camera zooms in on a horse

majestically rearing up on its hind legs again, like zooms in on the horse's face. And the horse gives the camera a look like, oh, fuck yes. Amazing. Just amazing. I know very little about Norway, but

this. is the most gloriously Norwegian work of art I've ever laid eyes on. That's the slide guitar riff. That's quite familiar. This is the Tornist Torn yet. I think it's safe to say. Who produced

Trina Rain's version of Torn. Anyway, Phil Thorn Alley. That's who. Mr. Co-writer of the song. Mr. I used to be in The Cure. Mr. Love Cats. Mr. Cool. Phil is taken matters into his own hands.

Phil appears to be of the opinion that Torn has not yet reached its full potential as a pop song. And Phil remains of that opinion, even after Trina Rain's version, even though Trina's version is excellent. So Phil tries again. I'm very sorry. I don't know how that got in there. That's the third level of Parapa the rapper. Which I don't believe anybody in my band ever got past. We didn't have much rhythm. As of course you remember, that is Prince Flea Swallow.

The Jamaican frog who is toasting at a flea market as he sells skunks. I do marvel sometimes. It's quite endearing, isn't it, the image of a hapless American rock band playing a weird Japanese video game in which a dog learns to rap, thanks to the interventions of a Jamaican. frog and a jovial moose named after an Italian dictator Life's Rich pageant. You know, so cosmopolitan. Never mind.

Forget it. I'm sorry. Thought I saw a man bought to life. He was warm. He came around like he was dignified. He showed me what it was to cry.

Natalie and Brulio was born in Sydney, Australia. She grew up singing Carpenter and Whitney Houston and Beatles and Michael Jackson songs into a hairbrush. She got big into dance. She wanted to be a star. That weirded out of her parents, but they got over it. She studied performance arts at the McDonald College boarding school, and at 16, she left school to play the role of Beth Brennan,

the kind-hearted, if perhaps too trusting, construction industry builders, apprentice in the Australian soap opera Neighbors. Neighbors with a U. She was on the show from 1992 to 94. Here is Beth sassing her fiancé, Brad, while trying to get him to lock down his best man at their wedding. Beth, in fact, left Brad at the altar after discovering his infidelity, but then they patched it up and got married for real. It was a good experience for her. Stephen's not going to bite your head off. Just go and ask him.

What's the rush? Well, the wedding is only three weeks away. It'd be nice to have a best man. Yeah, right on. Hey, come here. Love you. Natalie left neighbors in 1994 to pursue a music career in London. That arc from Australian soap opera renowned to international pop stardom is officially known as the Kylie Minogue. Hallowed Company.

Natalie got a record deal after what a 2021 Irish Times profile describes as a period of partying and aimless drifting. I can relate not to the partying, the drifting. Natalie is a voracious songwriter, her debut album. released in 1997 and called Left of the Middle, has 12 songs, and she co-wrote 10 of them. As it happens, this was one of the other two. Who we got here? Oh, look, it's Mr. Lovecats himself, Phil Thorn Alley,

on bass and some guitars in production. We got Dave Monday on lead guitar. We got Chuck Sable on drums. We got Katrina from Katrina and the Waves, Ms. Walking on Sunshine herself on backing vocals. We got the English electronic music duo zero seven on the drum loop. We got Nigel Godrich on the mix. Nigel best known in 1997 for producing a little album called OK Computer by a little bands called Radiohead.

We got quite a crew here. And for a solid half decade, we have dragged this poor song back and forth across the globe in a prolonged attempt to realize its true potential. But finally, we have arrived at the torn to rule them all. and we have found the singer who will sing the torn to rule them all. And my theory at this hour is that Natalie and Brulia takes command of this song on the line, This is How I Feel. It is an unnecessary line on paper.

This is how I feel. Whoever you are, however you're feeling, whatever song you're singing, it is redundant to sing. This is how I feel as you sing about how you feel. No? And yet, the line, this is how I feel, is necessary here. As Natalie delivers it, with the emphasis and the resignation Natalie brings to it.

And it could be that an Australian soap opera star has the precise intangible skill set required to infuse the precise amount of understated melodrama into this is how I feel, turning the line from unnecessary to very necessary. It could be. That's my theory right now. I think it's fair to say that torn music video helped as well. The Natalie and Brulia torn video directed by Alison McLean is low-key postmodern itself.

It's meta. It's a deconstruction. It's an extremely good video. The video is just Natalie and her sleepy, hunky, love interest in a simple static apartment shot, but the video crew keeps interfering and crashing into the frame and repositioning them. And Natalie's adorably huffing her hair out of her eyes and frustration. And she's wearing a hoodie and baggy army pants. And this sort of wardrobe discourse doesn't always come up in this venue either. But the hoodie and baggy army pants turn out to be

a big deal. Natalie's still talking about them in 2022 when she tells the independent that she picked that outfit because she was, quote, so body dysmorphic and insecure. She says, the army pants weren't even cool army pants. They weren't in fashion or anything. My intention in wearing that was that so you couldn't see my silhouette because I didn't want anyone to see. But it ended up that there was a power in that because it was like androgyny cool. But it really came from a place of, thank God I don't have to wear a dress. End quote. It is never pleasant. to revisit the press coverage 90s female pop stars received in the 90s. And so it goes, alas, for Natalie and Brulia.

An English DJ gave her a bunch of shit for not writing torn and basically accused her of stealing it. He said the song should have been called Ripped Off. And it was a big UK media controversy for like a half hour. Then everybody got over it. And later Natalie saw him at a bar and confronted him and he apologized. and he had her on his show where he sort of apologized again, and he said, I fancy do you like mad and you wouldn't go out with me. End quote. Yeah, it's good stuff. It's heartening.

This question of whether Natalie wrote Torn, she didn't and never pretended she did, has become relevant because her version of this song was a bonkers global pop hit. Left of the Middle sold 7 million copies worldwide, bunch of Grammy nominations, including Best New Artist, Instant Tabloid Mega Fiat. fame, so on and so forth. In 2015, she told Red Magazine, I had a moment when I bought a second home in L.A. that was like a ship. I had two cleaners, two gardeners, and then I thought, this is just stress. Who do you think you are? J. Lo? End quote. I can't look you in the eye and tell you, there's another song on left of the middle. That's as good as torn, but I can say this is a very fine

1997 pop star debut album with a lot of Alanis Morissette action happening but some portis head too in places and Natalie is a quite sharp and smoky songwriter who one corks some excellent line deliveries that song's called Leave Me Alone this song's called Smoke and I'm guessing it takes a lot of intense performing arts training

to hit the H in hiding this hard and this effectively But yeah, across now what is her 25-year six-album career, Torn is Natalie and Brulia's biggest hit. That's not terribly shocking. Nor is she going to sit around apologizing for Torn being one of her relatively few songs she didn't have a hand in writing. Talking to the Independent in 2022 about this cover of a cover business,

she says, it seems like everyone else is obsessed with that. But for me, being an artist is about being a good communicator. So I find it really funny and annoying that people trip out on this particular points with me. I mean, it was released twice before me, in English, by other people. I think, you know, some songs marry with the person. And it's my truth and how I related to what's in the lyrics and how I communicate that,

the authenticity of that, that people connect with. And that's valid. End quote. Yes, we have heard the climactic slide guitar note that ends torn in an earlier version of Torne, but I do sincerely think Natalie brings a vivid amount of blunt exasperation to the word ho. Do I feel bad for Trina Rain, our Norwegian friend, whose version of Torne is production-wise quite similar? A little. Do I feel bad for our LA alt-rocking and song co-writing friends and Edna Swap? A little, though Anne and Scott did make a shitload of money off Natalie's version.

Edna Swap's second album is called Wacko Magneto. It comes out in 1997. Same year is left at the middle, and it does not set the world aflame. And Edna Swap's new version of Torn on this record is very much overshadowed by what quickly becomes Natalie and Brulia's quite definitive take on Torn. But the Edna Swap 2.0 version of Torn, which is slowed down and grimeier and even less poppier than their first pass at their own song, makes clear that this band never. had any interest in turning their song into the pop supernova it was always capable of being. Their truth is not Natalie's truth, but that doesn't make their version truer. They just felt a different way about it. If you're in a band yourself, if you're an artist yourself, give Torne a shot sometime. Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with trying a cover of a cover of a cover of a cover of a cover of a cover. The song is perfect and the sky above you is perfect. And you can and tear it however you like. We are so thrilled to be joined this week

by the great singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins, who's been making records since 1992. Her hits include Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover, and as I Lay Me Down. And her upcoming new album, which I believe was just announced today, is called Free Myself, and it will be out on March 24th.

It's a huge honor, Sophie. Thank you so much for being here. Oh, me too. I love talking to it. The honor is mine, Robert. it. Awesome, awesome. So I asked you to come on to talk about Torn before. I found an interview with one of the songwriters who said, like, yeah, Sophie B. Hawkins had this great song on the radio called Damn, I Wish It Was Your Lover, and we love the drum machine. And we had that song in our heads as we sat down

to write Torn. Did you know that, first of all? Like, when you directly inspire other hit songs, like, is that conveyed to you somehow? No. I had no idea. This was the first I ever heard of it, and I'm totally stunned because I do the opposite. Well, I'm complimented because I do think the songwriters who wrote Torn, and I do know them or I know of them, they're very excellent songwriters. I've never listened to a song and then thought, I'm going to write a song. I'm one of those people who does the opposite. I think, well, I'm in a songwriting process now, so I don't listen to it. anything and I really try to go for what's you know the music in my soul like I sing a lot around

the house when I'm doing the dishes but I don't listen to other people's music on purpose because I don't want to have to deal with their melodies and their influence that makes sense I have you ever heard a song on the radio and thought to yourself like they listened to me before they wrote this song well I mean, there's such an obvious example where everyone, well, I might as well just say it now, so much time has passed. That song when Sunny comes home, which won the Grammy for like Best New Song, and it was the same year that as I leave me down was, you know, as I'll leave me down, he'd been climbing the charts for like nearly four years, first in Europe and then in America. and that song when Sunny comes home seems like a direct rip-off.

In fact, my publisher and my lawyer at the time were investigating and suing them for copyright infringement. But they dropped the case, I guess, you know, big record company businesses don't, you know, because we're both on Sony. And I stayed out of it. So yes, I do. I see that that song is a great example

when I think, oh my God, they've completely taken my chorus. That had never occurred to me, and now I'm very embarrassed that it had never occurred to me to connect those two songs. It makes a lot of sense what you're saying, I have to say. Well, other people told me, like my aunt called me from Boston. She's like, oh, my God, they saw you talk. People noticed it. It was very noticeable. I never say things about things like that because I'm always aware how much.

Well, I guess there's only with the scale, there's only so many melodies we can create. I think that probably everything has been done before. It's just a matter of when. But that was just so annoying because the same record company, the Grammy, all. But you know, whatever. Each song has their place in people's hearts. Yeah, that's hilarious. I did want to talk about Damn, which I love so much.

And it felt to me in real time in 1992, like, damn, I wish I was your lover, was like nothing else on the radio. Like, did you have a sense of where you fit into the early 90s pop landscape? Or did you have a sense that, like, you didn't necessarily fit anywhere immediately? Yeah, I'm smiling when you say it was like nothing else because that's my goal. That's my goal, even with the new album for you myself. My goal is to not fit in and to introduce another view, another landscape for all of us in, you know, sort of trapped in our era right now.

we are always looking for a way to think about things that we haven't thought about before, whether you know love ourselves or identity, our place, you know, on earth. So that's what I'm trying to do. And musically, too, I actually do want to find new things. I want to find new ways of putting chords together and melodies with chords and rhythms.

I'm actually struggling to do something so new. So when Sony will say, would say something like, you have to write another damn, I was like, that's the opposite of what I want to do. I never could write another damn again. That was one of those original songs. And they're not, they don't come that often.

Did Torn connect with you when you first heard it on the radio or whatever? Like, did you hear it as a music listener, or do you immediately jump to kind of subconsciously assessing it almost as an artist as a songwriter yourself? Hey, I love that question. So here's the test for me when I love a song or when I'm not in love with it. If I'm not in love of the song, I started assessing it. I start tearing it apart. And if I am in love with it, I just listen and love it.

So touring was one of the ones I loved. I loved torn. I remember when I first heard it on our way to L.A. I was doing the Roxy Tour for the Moxie Tour. We were playing at The Roxy. And here I was, promoting my first album. and it was incredible. And that song got under my skin.

And I think it was this wonderful feeling like, ah, I wish I had that song. I thought I would sound great singing it. And I wouldn't say the word is envious. It was just more like I could, that song is within, I could have something, something close to that song. It was intimate to me. I loved it.

And I still love it. And I actually sing it to myself. So it is still a, it was so surprising when I learned just now that they were influenced by my songwriting. So that's a huge compliment all the way around. What do you think you heard in it? What do you identify in it? When you say envious, when you think about singing it yourself or having it yourself,

what would you have brought to it specifically, do you think? The melody of the chorus, and I don't even know the lyrics, but just when I hear that in my head, I'm already torn. I just feel like, oh, that is so freaking gorgeous. It's so heartfelt. It's so I love it. I just love it.

And again, I don't know the lyrics to the song, two and through. I just hear what I hear. And it's one of those songs. Well, your lyrics have always struck me as so vivid. And I was going to ask what you made of torn lyrically. You know, I'm cold and I'm ashamed, lying naked on the floor is a super. raw and memorable image for a pop song. Like, is torn, to the extent you know the lyrics,

like, is torn a cut above your average hit song in terms of the songwriting and in terms of the poetry of it? I agree that for then it was, that confessional songwriting. And I don't, I actually don't think I do that, by the way. I think that Dan is completely different in all my songs. Like, they might start that way, but then I go through version after version of writing the same song until it comes to something a little more transcending my confessional part. So I always admire that confessional thing.

Tori Amos can do it and Torin did it and it was new then and it was, it was, it was wild. And now what I feel is people have made kind of, they've taken it to the limit of just, oh, you just want to say, oh, shut up. you don't even feel that you're just trying to sound confessional. But Torn really did sound confessional, and I love that. And I couldn't do it. Like I said, it's something I couldn't do. So that's probably where I wish that I could have done it.

But then again, I appreciate after these years the fact that I'd use something else. Did you feel in the 90s, you know, Torn was 97, you got started in 92. Did you feel throughout the decade that like confessional songwriting had sort of come on as like the thing to do and like something that you were getting pressured? to do more of? Well, I never actually heard the term until recently, actually. Somebody was talking to me about the 90s, and that's when I learned that that's what those artists were doing, like Tori Amis, as I mentioned,

and I could name a bunch of other ones. But, well, I mean, it was good for then, and it also wasn't sappy, but now it's gotten kind of like peachy and sappy. It was a great time for women, because, you know, it's always great to really have to rebel against something. And we really had a lot to rebel against the 80s. The 80s was such a concrete corporate yuck.

And then we had to come out with real music. And we were real musicians with real feelings wanting to say things differently. And we didn't want to play the game. And we didn't want to wear all those clothes. And we didn't want to put on the makeup. It was a good time to, you know, when you break out and you're doing something new, it's because you've been repressed and oppressed, and it's fabulous. But then when you have, then when people like have all the leeway, then it gets watered down and it's BS.

I have to say concrete corporate yuck is my favorite description of the 1980s I've ever heard in my life. That's, that's fantastic. Thank you very much for that. You're welcome. Torn is famously a cover, like there are multiple covers, like multiple covers, like multiple hit versions. And I wonder, as someone, like, you write all your songs, like, is there a fundamental difference to how you approach singing a song when you didn't write it, you know, and you know that other people have heard other people sing it before? Like, is there an intimidation factor to that? Or does simply singing the song make the song yours, at least for as long as you're singing it? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm very particular about

songs I sing like I cover the Dylan song on tongues and tails I want you and I play that on my tour and it's my fan's favorite you know when I sang it at Madison Square Garden too for the Bob Fest for the Dylan Fest and people still stop me on the street and they absolutely love the version that I did I completely I changed the chords I changed the time signature I changed everything about it and I did it on purpose because I wanted to make those lyrics mine stage I I wrote this. My name is Emma Goldman and I wrote this from prison

in the 1940s. And then Bob Dylan saw written on the prison wall and he made it a hit. So like I really go for it in the storytelling of this is my song. But, you know, of course I did. Bob Dylan wrote it.

But now I play it from behind the drum set in our show and people just love it and I love it too. So anyways, then I've been doing diamonds and rust. And that is, I have to say it takes a while to make it mine. I have to change it up. I have to sing it a lot,

and I have to find what is really mine about it. So, yeah, I don't go about it, like, just because I'm singing it. It's mine now. It takes me a lot of work to make it mine. And that's just the kind of person I am with everything, really. Yeah. Listening to Natalie's first record, which was 1997,

you can hear, and I've read that, like, Alanis Morissette was a huge influence on her, or at least on that record. You had a couple big records out already when Jagged Little Pill came out in 95, but when that record comes out and sells like 10 million copies or whatever, did that impact you?

Did you hear that record impact a lot of other artists? Jagged Little Pill, as brilliant as it is, did not impact me because it's not the style of songwriting that comes from me. You know, I appreciated it as a person. that's one of the ones where I didn't analyze it.

I just enjoyed it. I appreciated it. But it didn't impact me because the emotions are so different. Like she's such a different soul, Alanis Morse said, and that's really good. Actually, the same way Tori Amos didn't impact me, but it's almost like we're so different that we could be existing in the same party, but we would be talking at different times about different things.

things but appreciating each other. And that's really different than a lot of artists are competing. And I say this truthfully. To me, when a record or a book or a movie has this huge reach, it says a lot, but it doesn't say everything. It's not always that the best record sells the most. And same thing with books and movies and paintings. sometimes it is, but you really don't know for years and years and years. You have to then go back

and take all those records from that period of time and really listen to them now and say, this one last, that one may be a little bit dated. But I haven't done that, by the way, and I have no interest in doing that, but I would do that if I were like just an aficionado trying to make an essay or something. You know, I think it's fair and honest to say that Natalie had a great career but never had another hit at the scale of torn. And I thought about you and about how big damn was. And I wondered what that pressure was like on you and like on your next record to match that success, which you did with as I lay me down. But is there a genuine sort of tangible downside to having a hit as huge as torn immediately? Like critics love to talk about like a hit song being an

albatross or something. Like do artists, songwriters ever see it that way or is that silly? Well, I think it can be that way at times and then it can change and morph because, you know, we all grow and appreciate things differently. I don't know for Natalie how it was, but she didn't write it. So for me, if I had had a hit for the song I didn't write, I wouldn't have been very confident as a songwriter. I would have been actually torn. And then I wrote all my hits and as I leave me down, after Dan was even bigger than dam. And actually, Whaler was, the second record was bigger than the first. And I keep writing songs that I really love. And even if I don't have the promotion, I know my fans absolutely love them.

And I guess the answer to the question is, yes, it was a pain in the butt to have to hear all the time that they wanted another dam. But I also thought, just like a kid, oh, shut up. I don't want to write another dam. And neither does, the public doesn't need another dam. They need the next thing from the next artist. So basically, you can give in to the pressure, but you don't have to, and it's our duty as artists

to see above that and to see through it because we do have a duty. This is why they call it work. Otherwise, we'll just have somebody else to write me another hit. Hey, could you write me another hit like Demo, wish I was your lover?

You know what I would feel like? I would feel like, do-do. Yes. I don't think you're right. allowed to say the S-H-I-T word, right? You can say it all day, Sophie. I absolve you.

You go right ahead and say whatever you'd like. This is a safe space. I do-do is great, though. I hadn't heard that one in a while, and I'm thrilled to have heard it from you. You know, Natalie had a TV background, and of course, you've done TV as well. You know, you've been on the stage. Being a pop star and being an actress, like how much do those skill sets overlap really? You know, does acting come naturally after all your concert experience?

And do you think that being a TV star, as she was at the beginning, would make it easier for her to transition to being like a pop star? Well, I've never thought about this. I've never thought about any of these answers, by the way. So just take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt. For me, doing TV was really fun because. I did community and I got to play myself with really funny people. And I've been told, you know, that my humor is my best quality and luckily it came out on that show. So I never got to play. I did acting on the stage, which I thought was incredibly difficult and had nothing to do

with Sophie V. Hawkins, the quote unquote pop star, as you say. And what, you know, but you're bringing up something else. So there's Sophie the actress where I did work very hard to be a really, really great actress because I was playing Janice Joplin. And I can't tell you the years of work that went into playing Janice Chopin. And I did it, you know, from a musician's point of view and as an actress's point of view. And I wrote songs as Janice. Like I was all in. So that was one thing. So I would say to the answer of that question, my experience as being a very hardworking songwriter totally helped me with the discipline of playing Janice Choplin because I knew how to approach it. Or rather, I trusted my own way how to approach it.

approach it. But as far as Natalie and Ruevlia and TV, I mean, you can approach being a pop star from a completely superficial way. And I bet you that you're getting from this conversation that I don't approach anything from a superficial way. And it's a miracle that I was a pop star at all. So there. There we go. Just to wrap up, you know, I'm lucky and that I got to hear your new album Free Myself before it comes out. Green Eyes is my favorite song. if you're curious. That's my favorite song on the record. I'm totally curious. I love Green Eyes, and we're adding that to the set because this is the Free Myself Tour. I love that song. What is it, well, like, what does it remind you of? What does it remind me of? I get a lot of Nick Drake

off it, and I haven't listened to Nick Drake in a while, but that's, that was sort of the first thing that popped to my head, just like the gentleness and the intricacy of it. He's one of my absolute heroes. I love nature so freaking much. It's insane. Insane. And so yes, you're right. And it also reminds me of Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe of the book. You know, Asland? Like the, the, the mystical figure, green eyes is like to me, Aslan. It's just so, I just, I love that song too because it's beyond me. It's so storylike and it's so, ah, I can't define it. But anyways. I'm glad, all right, I'm glad that I got it right or got it close to right, I guess.

You know, you're putting on a new album. Natalie had a new album in the last couple of years. And I wanted to ask, like, the biggest difference for you, you know, writing and releasing an album in 2023 versus 1992. Like, obviously not that many people buy CDs anymore. But like, what is the biggest difference, you know, between trying to do this now and trying to do this, you know, in the early, the mid-90s? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, the thing that we don't get now is we don't get the money. We don't get the support.

And so I can't go and hire Omar Hakeem and Markey and work in a studio and have producers. It's all that fun is gone. And it's so scrappy now, you know, when we tour, but there's a beauty now to it too. Like, I'm forced to be so, people say you're so authentic. And I'm like, yeah, what choice do I have? There's no other way to do it. You can't hide. You're out there.

You're traveling around in a van. And it's almost like, then we were treated like, what were we treated like? Then we were treated like we were going to have to be stars to pay for all of this. Now we're treated like you're paying for this yourself and good luck. Well, that sounds awesome, except for not having the money. That sounds like a delightful way to have to do it. It is. I love my band so much.

And I have to say, I don't know when this is airing or even if it's live or whatever, but people have got to check my website, sophieb Hawkins.com. And I will say this shamelessly. I'm lying naked on the floor, shamelessly saying that they have to come see the show because it's so good and my musicians are so good and there's three of us and we keep switching instruments. It's really magical.

Absolutely. We will come and thank you for tying Torn back into it. That was, that was, that was wonderful. This has been fantastic, Sophie. I love talking to you. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much. Wow. Thanks so much to our guest this week, Sophie B. Hawkins. Thanks as always to our producers, Justin Sales and Jonathan Kerma. Additional production support provided by Chloe Clark, thank you very much. And thanks, as always, to you for listening. And now, without further ado, I implore you to go listen to Natalie and Brulia's version of Torn or any of the previous or subsequent versions of Torn. We'll see you next week.