Natalie Imbruglia - Come to Life
By Nick Manteris · 0 Comments · Leave a Comment
Australian singer-songwriter Natalie Imbruglia became an international star in the late nineties with the song “Torn” and the subsequent album, Left of the Middle, sold in excess of six million copies worldwide. She’s released two albums since then that have failed to be as commercially successful, but this time she’s gotten some help from Chris Martin of (the multi-platinum, award-winning band) Coldplay. Several of the songs on Come to Life are co-written by him and one of those is even produced by Brian Eno.
“My God” starts the album in a bad place with an undesirable chord progression in the “I don't know, I don't know, I don't know / here we go, here we go, here we go” section, but then the chorus kicks in to make up for the blunder. “Lukas” and “Fun” are the two songs written by Coldplay that Chris Martin decided to give to Natalie for some reason (my guess is that they are now dating), but they both sound like mediocre cover versions that don’t really fit in with her style and would have worked better by the original band. “Twenty” sounds like it was heavily influenced by Martin and company and comes across more natural than the actual Coldplay-penned tracks. The version of “Scars” here is better than the faster one that showed up online a while back and it’s the only song that is reminiscent of her previous style.
The first single is the dance-oriented “Want” – which was apparently tweaked enough by Chris Martin for him to share a writing credit – and the video for "Want" is shot to look like Natalie is alone with the camera, recording herself to presumably send the tape to the ex-lover addressed in the lyrics. For almost the entire song she is being provocative and seductive while rolling around mostly naked, but then, towards the end, the video intercuts between shots of her being sexy and some mildly distressing images of her crying. The effect actually ties in nicely with the song and it’s really a shame that the person in charge of the album cover didn’t use a still image from the video. The only remaining song of note is “All The Roses,” one of the slowest tracks with a power and emotion that easily make it the best on the album.
- Score
- 68%
Come to Life is an improvement over her last release, Counting Down the Days (which had at least two songs that sounded like blatant attempts to recreate the magic of “Torn”) and it seems like Natalie Imbruglia is starting to once again focus on the music instead of trying to reproduce her past success. Her recent efforts seem to be more focused on selling records than making music, but even if she never makes another album that sells as many copies as Left of the Middle, she’s already proved that she can make a better one. Unfortunately, the better album was her sophomore release, White Lilies Island, and without a radio-friendly hit like “Torn,” it only sold about a million copies worldwide. She may have to resign herself to the fact that her style of music is more niche than mainstream, but maybe she’ll be comfortable knowing that some of those fans truly appreciate her in a way that the big money artists will never know.
