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Look closely, and you’ll see we’re in the middle of a Delta Goodrem summer. The Aussie musician, who soared to fame in the early 2000s as the angel-faced, angel-voiced teenager behind such ballads as “Born To Try”, is seemingly everywhere right now: on stage, on tour, on telly.
In May, Goodrem, 41, made her Eurovision debut in style – propelled into the air on a platform that rose out from a golden piano, mid-key change. She has only just finished a set of live UK shows, a prelude to the world tour she will embark on next year in support of her forthcoming eighth album Pure. In a couple of weeks, Goodrem will touch down in London once again to begin rehearsals ahead of her stint on Strictly Come Dancing – though not before she closes out the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow tonight. “I feel it’s one of those years of saying yes to everything. I want to be adventurous. I’m ready for that in my life,” she says now, over video call from Sydney.
Back in Australia, where I grew up, the singer remains a national treasure. To some, particularly those who came of age in the early Noughties, Goodrem is as iconic as Vegemite or the Sydney Opera House, a venue she has played no fewer than five times, the most recent being last year when she sold out two anniversary shows of her 2005 album Mistaken Identity. Goodrem has been less of a constant presence over here, and this second shot at cracking the UK feels only right, given her first was cut short by tragedy.
It was in the same week that her debut album shot to No 2 in the UK charts that she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, forcing her off the promotion circuit and into a hospital bed, and effectively slamming the brakes on a music career that had quite literally just got going. It was 2004 and Goodrem was just 18. The experience was surreal to say the least. “I tried the best I could with the duality of what was happening,” says Goodrem. “Cancer doesn’t discriminate based on what job you’re doing. It says, ‘You have to look after this now.’”
The country rallied around her; by then, she was already known to millions as Nina, the sweet, shy high schooler on Neighbours. Newspapers filled with messages from readers sending their love; Sony, her label at the time, set up a “Get Well Delta” postbox to get a handle on the massive influx of letters from fans. Australia’s prime minister sent his regards. As did Elton John “on behalf of the United Kingdom”.
“The entire press world was sitting outside my door,” recalls Goodrem. “My brother would hand out biscuits to them, that’s one of my strong memories. Our house was like a train station!” Today, the idea of reporters camped outside the home of a teenage star screams invasion of privacy – but that’s not how Goodrem remembers it. “I’m pretty neutral about it,” she says after giving the question a good deal of thought. “There are so many stories in my life that I have to go into the filing cabinet of my mind… but I mean, it was all well wishes coming from them. And I think, as an 18-year-old back then, I was just focused on being with my friends and family.” Outside her bubble, hubbub continued to grow; Innocent Eyes spent a record-breaking 29 weeks at No 1 in Australia.
After months of chemotherapy and radiation, Goodrem went into remission before she was given the all-clear. It’s a period she speaks of with grit and grace. “I’ve gone through a lot of different emotions about my changes in trajectory when I first started [...] but I’ve since been able to see that hopefully that’s symbolic of being a survivor,” she says. “Being able to give back and make a difference – that’s a gift from that chapter in my life.” In 2020, she established the Delta Goodrem Foundation in partnership with the hospital in Sydney where she was treated.
Goodrem is still the human equivalent of a glowstick: a 1,000-kilowatt smile and the sort of enviable perma-tan that only Australians seem to possess. Certainly, hers is not the hardened exterior you might expect from a woman who was signed to Sony at 14 and came of age in the media hellscape that was the early 2000s. “My journey was positive,” she says simply. “Everyone has a different journey. I really did have great industry mentors, wonderful men and women around me, including my mum who was this fierce woman. It doesn’t mean I didn’t have to fight for myself, of course, but there was enough respect and understanding to have collaboration and conversation.”
Her parents made sure she maintained a normal life outside of music. “I never felt like I missed out on any childhood,” she says. “Also, I was the driver in my music. It wasn’t my parents. They just guided and protected me.”
Now, two decades later, Goodrem is still in the driver’s seat with an eighth album on the way. Set to be released in November, Pure has been described as “a return to myself” and follows on from her latest single “Hologram” – a big, gleaming gem of disco-pop. Sonically, it’s miles away from the heart-wrenching ballads on which Goodrem made her name, but spiritually it’s more similar than you think. It has that same bright-eyed, bushy-tailed optimism of “Not Me, Not I”.
Before then, though, Strictly… “I love the glamour of it!” Goodrem says of her decision to sign up to the BBC show. “My music has always been very piano-driven so this is my opportunity to learn something new and then I can take it on tour with me.” As for who she would like for a partner, she has just one request for producers. “I’m quite tall, so I’d love to have someone taller than me!” laughs Goodrem, who is just shy of 6ft. “I really don’t want to be the one that has to lift people.”
It’s fair to say that Strictly has been through the wringer recently, with this latest series arriving amid a spate of scandals. But Goodrem knows the game, having spent eight years on The Voice Australia where she was on the other side of things as a coach rather than contestant. “I can safely say that, being on the show for nine years, everyone worked very hard to make sure all the artists were shining on stage and getting to live out their dreams,” she says, “what you do with that moment is up to you. It is a TV show, and you have to create your next moment.”
The show also taught Goodrem the value of holding back sometimes. “I probably gave too much of myself [to the contestants],” she says. “I poured so much into it. I was always on the phone to the artists because I loved sharing; I’m an open book.” It’s her natural disposition, she says. “I’m such a ride-or-die person. When I love someone, I’ll do anything for them. And so when people are loyal to me, I’m so loyal back. Scorpio loyal.” It can come at a cost, though. “The show taught me about my own boundaries and pouring that back into myself and my own artistry.”
Season six of The Voice saw Goodrem become the target of online bullies who questioned the sincerity of her on-air enthusiasm. The earnestness that had once endeared her to audiences suddenly became the very thing they used to dismiss her as fake. Seal, her co-judge at the time, was among those to defend her publicly. “There was so much that I saw change culturally when Twitter came into play, and obviously being the only female coach for a long time, it was a very different dynamic for me,” Goodrem says. “I was 26, but people treated me like I was a lot older because I started so young. So I had to navigate those chapters of intensity under a microscope.” Though, she reminds me, it certainly wasn’t the first time.
Never were more eyes on Goodrem than in the wake of her cancer remission, when her return to public life carried the weighty comeback narrative of a seasoned musician three decades her senior. In 2004, Goodrem released Mistaken Identity. The album had a different thrust: more dark than its predecessor, more grown-up. Whether she intended for it to be or not, Mistaken Identity pushed against the idea of Goodrem as the nation’s most beatific pop sweetheart.
“Heading back into the world was definitely a change of gears,” she says now. “That’s probably when it felt most like going into the washing machine, so to speak – definitely a rougher, more turbulent chapter. Your identity changes after going through something so extreme.” Her parents had divorced, and her body – “my physicality” – was no longer the same. “Everything had changed.” The spotlight turned up some after it was revealed that Goodrem was dating Westlife singer Brian McFadden that same year – it turned up more still after their nasty and very public split in 2011. “Do I wish that it ended earlier? Yes. Do I wish I had the courage to leave earlier? Yes, I do,” she told Vogue in 2012. On the subject of McFadden today, Goodrem is looking on the bright side: “Every single path that’s led me to today and this beautiful relationship I’m in now, I’m grateful for.” (At one point in our conversation, her husband, the guitarist Matthew Copley, pops his head in with a big smile and a glass of water for his wife.)
Goodrem might just be one of pop’s most resilient stars. The cancer wasn’t even her last major health scare. In 2018, she had a salivary gland removed after which she woke up from the surgery to find her speech altered; a nerve in her tongue was paralysed. Goodrem couldn’t speak, let alone sing. “The lesson that came out of that experience was sometimes you have to surrender and listen,” she says. “It wasn’t about talking or doing. It was a real reset. It is something you cannot rush.” In the end, it took over a year for Goodrem to regain her voice. She’s certainly putting it to good use now, with her year of saying yes.
‘Pure’ is out via Universal Records on 6 November, with ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ set to launch in September
