Songs Rhino loves, #102: Natalie Imbruglia - “Torn” (Ednaswap cover)

A perfect single, and a deserving smash hit!

I don’t know very much about Natalie Imbruglia, the Australian chanteuse who turned this into a smash hit in 1997, and I know even less about Ednaswap, the rock band whose two most successful members (Scott Cutler and Anne Preven) wrote it. Phil Thornalley, who is British, is the third credited songwriter, and I had never heard of him either; apparently Imbruglia involved him in her recording! And the first version of the song to be officially released was a 1993 Danish-language version by the singer Lis Sørensen, which was followed by Trine Rein’s Norwegian-language version from 1996! Even the massively talented Phoebe Bridgers, whom I can guarantee will appear in this column at least once at some point in the relatively near future, has covered this song! But I didn’t know any of that when I sat down to write this piece; a friend of mine simply happened to let me know that this song was a cover late in the going! It’s always fascinating to learn that a beloved song has more of a history than one realizes.

In any case, I’ve always loved Imbruglia’s version of this song, and I randomly remembered that it existed on the evening of Thursday, February 9th, 2023, and promptly listened to it about 25 times in as many hours; I think it’s excellent! It’s intelligent and thoughtful and piercing and startlingly raw; it lets us in on a person’s whole world in the space of four minutes and four seconds. I find it very moving, and it gladdens my heart to know that I share my love of it with some of the most ostentatiously masculine men in my life, including the great DJ Illicit, the battle rapper Lotus James, and my close mans Tyler “Skizza” Lee and Bradley “Notion” Thorn. As well it should be! This song is very powerful!