Natalie Imbruglia on her worst audition: 'I remember feeling icky'

When it comes to writing music, Natalie Imbruglia needs constant motion.

"I walk around in circles to get the melodies, to catch them," the Australian singer says.

"If I'm sat in a chair, I get nothing.

"So if I go and work with someone new and they have a shoebox-sized studio, I'm like, 'How am I going to do my circles?'"

Imbruglia doesn't know exactly how many laps she completed during the making of her dancefloor-ready seventh album, Algorithm. But it was a lot.

Inspired by Talking Heads and Grace Jones, it's a record whose shimmering surfaces disguise lyrics of deep emotional complexity.

On Who Dimmed The Lights, the 51-year-old addresses how her mental health "unravelled" as she went through perimenopause.

"It was really tough," she says. "Perimenopause is not just about hormones. It's to do with your mind. Your brain needs oestrogen to function, so when the levels fluctuate, it affects your spatial awareness.

"I've never walked into so many doorways. The brain fog's quite jarring."

Doorways weren't the only problem. Imbruglia says perimenopause exacerbated her ADHD, which she was diagnosed with in midlife. Other symptoms included heightened anxiety and anger.

"You start seeing an expression on other people of, like, 'What's happening to you?'

"I was seeing that face a lot, and it's to do with your ability to process [information]. Your fuse is shorter."

Things came to a head on tour, where her stage fright went into overdrive and she suffered "just terrible, terrible anxiety".

"I become sensitive to sound, so it feels like you're screaming at me if you're talking normally," she says. "I can't process questions very well. I act twitchy and weird, and it seemed to get worse with perimenopause."

She says her behaviour became a "nightmare" for her team. Pressed for an example, she explains: "If you asked me whether I wanted still or sparkling water, I'd say, 'That's a question, and I can't answer questions right now'.

"How diva is that?"

Well, it's not exactly Mariah Carey demanding baskets of puppies and forbidding eye contact, but Imbruglia was shaken up.

The day after one concert, she told her co-writers David Sneddon and Anu Pillai, "Guys, I think I'm going to have to quit my job because I can't cope with how I'm treating people before the show."

They helped to talk her down, putting her fight-or-flight instincts into context.

"What they helped me realise is that I was trying to stop the behaviour with willpower, and if I just relaxed into it and said to myself, 'You know, you're about to perform in front of a lot of people, it's natural that you're nervous', maybe I wouldn't be resisting it as much."

The impromptu therapy session inspired a new song, Upside Down - but Imbruglia is understandably frustrated that perimenopause isn't more widely understood, saying many women are rejected by their GP when they seek HRT treatment.

"My mum never talked to me about it," she reflects, "but looking back, I know she had a really bad one.

"Her anxiety was off the charts, too, and I have a lot more compassion now, because she had four kids. I've only got one."

As a child in Sydney, Imbruglia was drawn to performing. She'd squeeze lemon on her hair to make it blonder, and put on concerts of Whitney Houston covers for her neighbours.

Before long, she was cast in commercials for Coca-Cola and Twisties, and spent her Christmases singing carols in shopping centres.

"But when you turn 15 or 16, and you're into boys, you're like, 'Oh, that's really naff. I don't want to be doing that any more'," she laughs.

From that point onwards, Imbruglia became "basically unparentable".

"I was sneaking out and sleeping in someone's car on the beach, then getting busted.

"My parents were really strict - and my mum would turn up at parties with my picture, going, 'Have you seen this girl?'

"Socially, it was a disaster."

Music continued to be her solace. Dating a drummer, she switched allegiance from Whitney Houston to Tom Waits and Tori Amos, but the urge to sing remained.

You can see that hunger in a recently rediscovered photograph of a pre-fame Imbruglia, pressed up against the barriers of an INXS concert in 1992.

"It was my first ever concert," she says. "I was 15. I had white, tight jeans on."

In the photo, "everyone else is screaming but I'm looking at (Michael Hutchence) with this determination in my eyes.

"I'm studying him, like, 'How can I be up there too?'"

She got her chance in 1997 after quitting her role as builder's apprentice Beth Brennan in Aussie soap Neighbours.

Moving to London, she signed a deal with RCA Records and immediately scored an international hit with her first single, Torn.

Famously, the song was a cover – a fact journalists never let her forget, even though she co-wrote every other track on her debut album, Left of the Middle (lifetime sales, seven million copies).

"Yeah, I got famous on a song that I didn't write," she says now, "but there's more to what you bring to a song than whether you wrote the lyrics."

She still loves the song – "Torn was a beautiful gift" – but the furore around it fuelled her insecurities.

As a result, she essentially self-sabotaged her career. The lead single from her second album, That Day, was a free-verse stream-of-consciousness that sounded like a manic inner monologue.

"That was my rebellion against Torn," she says. "It doesn't have a chorus.

"That was my way of going, 'Can I get on with my life now? I've just started learning the craft of songwriting, I'm young, I didn't ask for this'."

In the midst of the madness, she auditioned for the lead role of Satine in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge – which counts as one of the stranger experiences of her career.

"The audition was, pretty much, 'Have an orgasm'," she grimaces. "Because I think that happens in the movie." (Indeed, Satine delivers a breathy boudoir monologue as she tries to seduce Ewan McGregor's character, Christian.)

But Imbruglia stresses it wasn't a creepy casting couch situation.

"It's Baz, that doesn't really fit," she says of the soft-hearted director.

"But I remember leaving and feeling really icky. Like, 'Ohhh, that was awful. Where's my mummy?'"

Back in the world of music, Imbruglia returned to more commercial sounds on hits like Wrong Impression (2002) and Shiver (2005). But sales dwindled and her fourth album was shelved by her label.

In the years that followed, she joined the Australian version of The X Factor and appeared in a UK production of Alan Ayckbourn's play Things We Do for Love, before making a tentative return to music with covers album Male (2015); and the more personal, introspective Firebird (2021).

"It was quitting music and coming back to it that gave me an appreciation of my abilities," she says.

"I might not be the best songwriter, even now, but there's only one me, and when I go inside myself and feel the emotion of what I'm writing about and deliver it, that's what my fans resonate with, and that's enough."

She certainly has a lot to say on Algorithm. As well as the frank discussion of mental health, the title track talks about her flirtation with internet conspiracy theories.

She won't say which ones ("I think it's irresponsible") but stresses the danger is omnipresent.

"There's a voice in my head that says, 'You don't want to click on that', and I'll click on it. It's like this compulsion.

"You have to change the settings. Don't allow yourself to be in a situation where your stress relief is scrolling on a phone in bed. It's just not healthy."

Ultimately, however, the album ends on a note of positivity.

Beautiful Love, co-written with Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody, is a soaring hymn to embracing your flaws and making peace with life's highs and lows.

"I've always made the joke that I'll never be a Buddhist because it's a middle path," she smiles.

"I like the pendulum to swing. Whether it's extreme joy or extreme pain, I like to feel the experience of life."