ednaswap, “torn” (1996)
Originally published at parlando. Please leave any comments there.
Song Project #17
A few years ago, Australian soap opera star Natalie Imbruglia had a big international hit with a lite dance-pop song called “Torn”. I’ve never cared for it. The sprightly, airy arrangement is at odds with the agony in the lyrics, and it doesn’t sound like an artistic choice, like it’s supposed to be some kind of ironic counterpoint; it sounds like the words are just there because she has to be singing something. Nothing about Imbruglia’s pretty but passionless delivery suggests she feels anything in the words, either. She didn’t write them, though of course that shouldn’t matter: but as a singer, Imbruglia isn’t much of an actress. It’s no surprise that she’s had no more hits.
She didn’t write it, and she was far from the first to record it; but the band that wrote it - an L.A. band called Ednaswap - weren’t the first to record it, either, and while the song traveled a long way stylistically from the band’s multiple versions to Imbruglia’s, the original demo recording is apparently very similar to Imbruglia’s hit. The original demo was written and recorded in 1991 by Scott Butler, Anne Previn, and ex-Cure member Phil Thornalley. Previn wrote the lyrics. The first released version was by a Danish singer named Lis Sørensen, the song translated as “Brændt” (”Burnt”). I have no idea how the song made it to Denmark before it had been otherwise recorded.
Butler and Previn formed Ednaswap and recorded their own version on their eponymous debut in 1995. Their first version has a pop-rock feel, a bit fast and mechanical on the beat; it’s a good take, a highlight of the album, but they hadn’t nailed it yet. Meanwhile, in 1996 the Norwegian singer Trine Rein had a big European hit with a dance-pop arrangement of the song (in English), setting the stage for Imbruglia’s similarly arranged hit two years later - with Phil Thornalley on bass.
Two years before Imbruglia’s version, Ednaswap had a second go at the song, for their Chicken EP. This, the power ballad version, is the one I’m nuts about. That it was not a hit at the time is an indictment (blah blah blah) of the workings of the record and radio industry, but of course it’s just one more indictment among thousands. I don’t think everything I love should be a hit, but this song ought to be a classic. It’s polished but raw, a perfect arrangement riding guitar noise barely kept in check and channeled into melody, with a deep, impassioned vocal that doesn’t yell or howl, just pours feeling into the words, pulling back and squeezing the heart on “this is how I feel“. It trims everything extraneous from their original recording - the bridge and the outro are gone, and the drums now support the song instead of pulling it along. Fully half of the new recording - the intro, first verse and first chorus - builds the tension, holding back the flood, then bursting the dam in classic power-ballad fashion at the opening of the second verse. The first recording fades on a long outro, and it’s nice, but this one lets the noisy guitar and the agonized vocal come to a cold, ringing stop, the spotlight on the singer with her head bowed.
When the Imbruglia version became a hit and KROQ began playing it, some listeners called and demanded they play the Ednaswap version. KROQ made a contest out of it: they played both versions, and invited their listeners to vote on which one KROQ should keep playing. Ednaswap won.