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 Delta Goodrem has lived a remarkable and tumultuous life so far. It is a life that has been defined by lofty heights and cruel, crushing lows.
At only 23 years of age, she has achieved extraordinary success in the music industry, here and abroad. She was signed at 15 and landed her first number one single, ‘Born to Try’, at 18. She now has eight number one singles under her belt, and her world-wide album sales have risen to in excess of 3.5 million units.
On the other end of the mortal spectrum, she has already endured, and ultimately overcome, cancer. She was fodder for gossip during her short but unfortunate liaison with Mark ‘The Age of Love’ Philippoussis. She was then torn to within an inch of any positive public image by the relentless UK media after her relationship with Brian McFadden bloomed. She was a homewrecker, the scarlet woman.
“That first ball had started rolling and then it all stopped,” Delta tells Queensland Pride. “It was like planes, trains and automobiles to hospitals with oncologists and haemotologists – this whole other world. I think people forget that I was 18. As much as I tried to hold myself up, I was so young.”
To add insult to injury, Delta has been forced to constantly fight against the public’s perception of her as pure, cherubic, innocent and vulnerable.
“I used to feel that I had to be someone different,” she says. “As soon as the camera was on I went into sweet Delta mode. And it’s so much safer to do that. If I was to say everything all the time, it would just cause problems.”
Indeed, her third studio album, Delta, reflects her new lease on life – Delta the free spirit; Delta the empowered, independent woman, creative again on her own terms.
“What Mistaken Identity [her second album] said for the public was totally different to what I thought it said. I was trying to say that I was this girl who all of a sudden had blown up from steroids, I was really puffy through fluid retention, I’d gone green in the skin department, I’d lost my hair, and I had braces on because my teeth were moving from it all.
“I had no idea who that person was – that’s what I was saying!
“That’s why I decided to call this album ‘Delta’ because I didn’t want to be complicated any more.”
When asked what comes to mind when she looks back on her time with Philippoussis, Delta is refreshingly candid.
“I honestly can’t say I regret anything,” she muses. “But I think I tipped over into tabloid when I first starting dating him.
“When you look back you can say ‘I didn’t really need to step into that’, but at the same time, I only dated somebody and it wasn’t a long time. Well, not long enough to go ‘woe is me’!”
Still, Delta is on the record jokingly justifying her relationship with Philippoussis by the fact she was on strong medications during her cancer treatment.
“I was worried when that first came out,” she admits. “I was like ‘Delta, bite your tongue’!”
Her current “awesome” long-term relationship with Irish crooner Brian McFadden has given her a certain generousity of spirit when it comes to dissecting her past romantic train wrecks.
“I’m really one to go ‘What did I learn from this?’. We were very different people but I would never say a bad word.”
McFadden was an elemental part of Delta’s primary songwriting team for the new album.
“We are the best of friends,” she says. “We are very yin and yang. Everything I don’t have as a person, Brian has, and everything he doesn’t have, I have.”
Delta is nonplussed about how the public perceives her now, and is happy to once again be holding the reins of her own life.
“I feel quite free in myself and in my spirit that I can do whatever I like now,” she tells. “I’ve joined the dots on a couple of things. I feel good about the album – here I am.
“If you don’t like me by now, you’ll probably never like me anyway.”
And if her relationship with McFadden goes sour, she’s always got Heidi Klum, who she would happily turn gay for.
“I love her,” she gushes. “I think she’s just so gorgeous!”
Delta is out now via Sony BMG.
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Delta force
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