Losing my speech was a real reset moment in my life
AUSTRALIAN SINGER DELTA GOODREM TALKS TO ALEX GREEN ABOUT FAME, LEARNING TO SPEAK AGAIN AND THE KINDNESS OF SIR ELTON JOHN
DELTA GOODREM has lived quite a life in her 36 years.
The Australian pop singer was just 15 when she signed a record deal with Sony.
The next year she made her debut in Neighbours as wide-eyed school girl and aspiring singer Nina Tucker. But by 18 she was in hospital, battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a white blood cell cancer.
This was nearly two decades ago, but Delta has decided to revisit that period, and other similarly formative times in her life, on her new album.
“Everything that’s ever happened has given me a new depth, a new colour to the rainbow, as I say to people,” she explains, down the phone from Australia, where she has spent much of the pandemic.
“You find another depth within you and I think that comes (with) involving your heart and soul, and that’s what this record is for me.”
Bridge Over Troubled Dreams, Delta’s seventh album, came shortly after another trauma.
She faced complications while having a salivary gland removed in 2018, which led to the paralysis of a nerve in her tongue – a time she describes as “tongue-gate”.
She had to re-learn to speak, then sing, through rigorous rehabilitation and speech training.
“Anybody who is in the middle of going through a challenge, whether you’re in a cancer fight, whether you’ve gone through something traumatic, there are many different phases and different moments you’re going to feel.
“It’s a step-by-step process. It’s the first realisation. Then it’s the journey of, ‘OK, this is happening’.”
Delta, however, has managed to transform trauma into triumph.
“It really was a reset moment in my life,” she recalls. “It happened just before the whole world went into this moment of reset.”
She has written an album track about the ordeal.
“The song, Paralyzed, really was the starting point,” she says. “After losing my speech, I had a quiet moment. Just listening, watching, taking a moment and going, ‘Okay, how did we get here?”’
The album is accompanied by a book, published by Simon & Schuster, that features the stories behind the songs, plus lyrics and pictures.
Dear Elton, a public thank you to Sir Elton John for offering support during her cancer treatment, is a poignant moment on the album.
When Delta was in hospital, he sent flowers and so she has written a song, with Rocket Man references galore, in return.
“When I got diagnosed with cancer when I was 18, obviously, I had just broken through in the UK, my album was number two on the chart that week.
“Then a different course happened and he reached out and sent a beautiful orchid. I always thought of that as just one of the most amazing things.
“Just to take the time... and it was so incredible, and I see what he does for all artists...
“The first day of chemotherapy, I got a call from him. My mum came down and I had just had my first round and he said: ‘On behalf of all of us, we are thinking of you’.
“I was like, ‘Thank you so much!”’
Delta was a fixture of British pop culture during the early 2000s. She was a regular at award shows and dating former Westlife star Brian McFadden – they became a pop power couple.
Asked about being famous, she says: “I actually took it as a great responsibility from a young age. I have always tried my very best, and continue to along the way, so you can give out a good message, a positive message. Like starting my foundation last year (which raises money for blood cancer research). There’s a real drive in me always. What good is it (fame) if you can’t do something good with it?”
Everything that’s ever happened has given me a new depth, a new colour to the rainbow