Male Natalie Imbruglia

• 1Instant Crush04:51
• 2Cannonball03:27
• 3The Summer03:18
• 4I Will Follow You into the Dark03:26
• 5Goodbye in His Eyes04:36
• 6Friday I'm in Love03:17
• 7Naked as We Came02:40
• 8Let My Love Open the Door03:10
• 9Only Love Can Break Your Heart02:51
• 10I Melt with You04:08
• 11The Waiting03:18
• 12The Wind02:19
• 13Instant Crush (Radio Edit)03:26
• Total Runtime44:47

Info for Male

Three-time Grammy nominee, songwriter, actor and model, Natalie Imbruglia returns with her release „Male“. Imbruglia, best known for her 1997 hit song 'Torn' and the accompanying video, finds inspiration for her new album from male songwriters that she loves. As the title suggests, Male - her first album since 2009 - is a collection of classic and contemporary songs all performed by men including Cat Stevens ('The Wind'), Tom Petty ('The Waiting'), Neil Young ('Only Love Can Break Your Heart'), Damien Rice ('Cannonball'), Pete Townshend ('Let My Love Open the Door') and Sam Beam of Iron & Wine ('Naked As We Came').

Of the album concept, Imbruglia, who hails from Australia says, 'I was drawn to songs by men, but wanted to show a woman's take on them. I also wanted something organic and vocally-driven, not heavily produced, and with real musicians. Most importantly, I had to be emotionally connected to all of the songs.'

Male's first single is the lead track 'Instant Crush,' which was originally recorded by the electro-pop Grammy winners Daft Punk. The song was written by the duo's Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, along with The Strokes' Julian Casablancas who also sang on the original track. The music video made its debut exclusively on Entertainment Tonight and Mashable.com - check it out here.

'On the original version, you can't really hear what the song is about because of the effect that Julian's voice has, which I love, by the way,' says Imbruglia. 'However, it is such a beautiful story that I want people to hear it and connect with the words. I'm really proud of the way it turned out.'

Also central to Imbruglia's Male concept was her desire to find songs that could be transformed by a female's interpretation. She did just that with producer Billy Mann, who has also worked with artists like Pink, John Legend, Celine Dion, Martina McBride, and Sting, among others.

'It was about finding different ways to recreate songs from a female point of view, and at the same time staying true to the original,' continues Imbruglia. 'A lot of them were written by artists I love, whose music has had a big effect on me. However, I also discovered others for the first time, like the Zac Brown Band and their song 'Goodbye in His Eyes,' which made the process a lot of fun. My voice really lends itself to that song, and I love a little bit of country.'

Imbruglia likewise gives a surprising country approach to The Cure's 'Friday I'm in Love.' Her version employs a banjitar banjo/guitar combo. 'I can tell this song is going to be one of my favorites to play live, I love it.'

'Torn' still sounds fresh today as evidenced by its ongoing radio airplay and ubiquity on multiple Spotify playlists, which have generated over 30 million streams. While this iconic hit brought Imbruglia international fame along with three Grammy nominations and the 1998 MTV Video Music Award for 'Best New Artist,' she is a woman of many talents. Her pop music success followed an acting role in the long-running Australian TV drama series Neighbours, in which she played the role of Beth Brennan. Over the last three years she has been studying acting in Los Angeles and also made her U.K. stage debut in Alan Aycbourn's Things We Do For Love. Imbruglia is a global ambassador for Virgin Unite, the non-profit foundation for The Virgin Group and is the spokesperson for the U.N campaign to end fistula.

Natalie Imbruglia
Propelled by international hit (and radio staple to this day) Torn, her debut album, 1997's Left Of The Middle, sold seven million copies, but it was her last studio album, 2005's Counting Down The Days, that went to Number One, with lead single Shiver becoming the most played song on British radio that year. Imbruglia: you don't pronounce the 'g'.

She's finished with acting for now, although she really enjoyed making Closed For Winter, an Australian movie released this year.

For a minute there she was almost an indie label proprietor - she was on the verge of setting up Malabar Records, until one of her earliest champions in the music business, David Joseph, offered her a licensing deal with Universal/Island, where he's Chairman/CEO of Universal Music UK.

She's an enthusiastic charity campaigner - a proper, boots-on-the-ground advocate for the fight against obstetric fistula who's visited Nigeria five times in the last four years. 'We've raised millions for women suffering from this condition,' she will say, 'we've started an outreach programme where women get trained in basic healthcare, go back to their communities and encourage others to come forward. We've trained surgeons, and brought surgeons out from the UK. There's been a lot of progress, but there's still a lot of work to do.'

She's the singer and songwriter to whom Chris Martin has gifted what the frontman has described as 'the best Coldplay song he has written. How highly does Martin rate Imbruglia and the songs she's been assembling for her new album? High enough to take her round to Brian Eno's place to borrow the art-boffin's studio, to lend a songwriting hand in other places, and to offer some sterling advice on tracklisting and sequencing (important things, those). And Natalie Imbruglia is the woman behind Come To Life: a TUNE-stuffed album.

Two years ago Natalie Imbruglia celebrated ten years of releasing music with a Greatest Hits. It was, she says, now a line in sand. A clearing of the decks. A full stop.

'It coincided with the end of my working relationship with my old label as well, so it really was a chance for a fresh start,' she acknowledges. 'I do feel I've got more freedom than I've ever had as an artist.'

That freedom reflected itself in her approach to songwriting and production. Imbruglia decided she would follow her muse. If that meant working with a variety of old friends and colleagues all over the world, so be it - she wrote with, amongst others Los Angeles-based Scottish writer Gary Clark (formerly of Danny Wilson), bunkered down in Miloco Studios in London with producer Ben Hillier (Blur, Depeche Mode, The Horrors), and also with the help of Dave McCracken (Ian Brown, Beyonce).

If that meant, as she puts it, 'flipping' some of the songs she'd written 'completely on their head', fair enough. "For example 'Scars' changed from the demo to become an Arcade Fire, crescendo type track but then returned to the ballad-like demo"

'It's taken me years to have the confidence to let songs be changed, messed up, cut up, broken into pieces and assembled into something new. Ben Hillier helped me with that - I asked him for curveballs, and he turned songs that started out like Stevie Nicks into dance tracks. Brilliant!'

'I think there's a lot of songs that could be the first single - the album's quite schizophrenic,' she continues. 'I'm an album person, I don't really think about singles. I like bodies of work when I buy records. As long as I'm happy with all the songs I don't sweat it. But I love that Want is completely different from what I've done before. It's nice to come back with something really fresh.'

Showcasing that 'schizophrenia' is the shimmering, deeply personal All The Roses, an electronic ballad that shows 2009's crop of Eighties-referencing young female artists how a Kate Bush vibe and a nape-tickling synth-scape are really done.

"It was my grandmothers funeral in Australia. My uncle was in a motel and my late grandfather appeared to him at the end of his bed and told him to dig up my grandmothers rose bushes. Bizarrely my dad and uncle had been discussing the roses earlier that day and had decided it would be too difficult to do anything with them. My grandfather even told my uncle where to find a shovel and to watch out for the pipes down there! They dug it up, gave clippings to all the grandchildren, and the roses bloomed out of season. My grandfather was a man of few words but was a really loveable guy. I know some people think it's wacky but I believe all that stuff. what a trip..." The fat groove of Cameo is another club banger in waiting, and is reflective of Imbruglia's desire to include a bunch of 'sexy songs with beat, attitude, more of a sense of a humour.'

The sassy Wild About It came out of the same writing session. 'Those songs are really representative of where I am now.'

'After getting out of my deal with Sony I had a real creative spurt. I was feeling strong, confident and YES, sexy. Because of this new found freedom I started experimenting musically.'

'Chris was brutally honest, which is quite refreshing. Someone that talented you can trust. It was really nice to have an objective person come in and help you a bit.'

She knew Martin from 'years ago. I used to be at all Coldplay's early gigs.' But they hadn't spoken in a while, until Martin got in touch out of the blue, saying he had 'a couple of ideas that might not be right for Coldplay but they might be right for me. The next thing I know I'm at Brian Eno's house, borrowing his studio, as Chris sang this song to me...'

It was Fun, a glorious, heartfelt pop song. 'I thought it was the most beautiful song I'd ever heard. I nearly did one of those ugly cries and almost had to leave the room,' she laughs. 'I thought, why does he want to give it to me? But he just did. Lucky me, it's absolutely beautiful.'

Martin also lent a songwriterly hand with a tweak of Want, while Lukas began life as a Coldplay song. Fun and Lukas are instant classics both, but they sit of a piece with the rest of the songs on Come To Life. Scars (written with Jamie Hartman of Ben's Brother) is another elegant ballad, while Twenty, lush with strings and a thumping beat is sure to be a live favourite. Then there's WYUT, a raw, strident rocker written with two friends, Alan Johannes and Natasha Schneider in Los Angeles. It is a bitter sweet experience for Natalie as Natasha lost her battle with cancer before the album was finished. Natalie is clearly still upset, and it's perhaps no coincidence that her performance of the song is the album's spikiest moment.

Some things you'll soon know about Natalie Imbruglia.

She's a campaigner who's not to be trifled with - she recently addressed a UN forum in Geneva, encouraging heads of government to return to their countries to make the fight against fistula a priority on their health and social agendas.

She's never sounded better. Or, as Chris Martin puts it, "she sounds f*****g brilliant on [her new album]. I think she has a very unique talent and has an incredibly unique voice."

She's made the album of her career, and of her life. 'The title, Come To Life, is about really living,' she says, enthusiasm radiating from her conversation as much as it does from her new songs, 'not living the life that everyone thinks you should. It's about being who you are stepping up and stepping out. That,' she says with justifiable pride, 'is what I've done, and I hope people hear that in the songs.'

Booklet for Male