Angst with Sugar on It

By David E. Thigpen

Before she launched her singing career two years ago, Natalie Imbruglia starred in an Australian soap opera called Neighbours, sort of a cheesy Melrose Place Down Under. When she grew tired of soaps, she moved on to London, met a record producer and released an album, Left of the Middle, that became a smash hit. When Left recently debuted in the U.S., it entered the charts at No. 10, outselling the new Pearl Jam album and beating the first-week sales of Alanis Morissette's 1995 debut, Jagged Little Pill.

Imbruglia (the g is silent), 23, is the most efficient pop product to invade these shores since the Spice Girls. Her voice is girlish but with a captivatingly plaintive edge. She is mediagenic in the extreme--resembling a slacker Courtney Cox--with big, imploring eyes and the kind of perfect cheekbones that suggest there may be a career in runway work awaiting if her music ever runs dry. Such looks have made her an instant hit in fashion and music magazines and on TV; Saturday Night Live put her on the air even before her album reached the stores. If she can keep coming up with hits like the sugary, ubiquitous single Torn, she shouldn't have much trouble maintaining stardom in the U.S. too.

Still, Imbruglia will probably never be mistaken for a singer-songwriter. Although she's credited with co-writing most of Left's songs, the album was born with a battery of producers in attendance, including Nigel Godrich of Radiohead, and former Cure bassist Phil Thornalley. Nor will Imbruglia score points for originality. Most of the album's songs sound as if they had been ripped right out of Morissette's songbook. A few do hit the pop bull's-eye. Intuition and Torn start off sweetly and gather into cloudbursts of righteous rage, touching on jealousy, infatuation and all the hot buttons of young feminine angst.

"Illusion never changed/Into something real," she sings on Torn, lamenting a relationship in which she felt used. It's a caution she might do well to take to heart. For if Imbruglia ever hopes to be viewed as more than a producer's puppet, she'll have to break free and find a voice of her own.

--By David E. Thigpen