Happy 20th Anniversary to Natalie Imbruglia’s second studio album White Lilies Island, originally released November 5, 2001.
Prior to conquering the international airwaves toward the end of the 1990s, Australian singer-songwriter Natalie Imbruglia had entertained audiences as an actress. Starting in 1992, she starred on Neighbours, the Antipodean soap opera that was dually revered in the United Kingdom, before relocating from Melbourne to London in 1994. It was a canny move—one that recalled foregoing Neighbours alumna Kylie Minogue and her own extraordinary transition from the small screen to the realm of pop.
Imbruglia did the demo rounds until RCA Records opted to give her a shot. Released in the fall of 1997, her debut album Left of the Middle took off like a rocket globally. An eclectic batch of tunes, Imbruglia co-scripted a decent portion of its stock—this included “Big Mistake,” “Smoke” and “Wishing I Was There,” three of its four charters. But it was that very first single, “Torn,” that got everything going.
The track was penned by stateside musicians Scott Cutler and Anne Preven in cooperation with renowned English songsmith Phil Thornalley in 1993— Thornalley later teamed with Imbruglia on portions of Left of the Middle. Initially handled by vocalists Lis Sørensen and Trinne Rein, Cutler and Preven tried their hand at it via their joint band venture Ednaswap in 1995. All that storied history aside, Imbruglia accomplished what those before her couldn’t: she made “Torn” her own. But what impressed even more than that blockbusting single and the album it called home was Imbruglia’s determination to not be defined as an epochal flash in the pan.
Due to the scores of gold and platinum tallies Left of the Middle had accrued, the recording budget was no object for the RCA label regarding its expected successor. An emphasis on Imbruglia’s songwriting and collaborative networking skills were essential to achieving her desired goal. Named for a parcel of English peninsula in Windsor between Clewer Mill Stream and the larger River Thames—Imbruglia had hung her residential hat here at the time—White Lilies Island was conceived and executed across the first two quarters of 2001.
Patrick Leonard, Pascal Gabriel, Matthew Wilder, Ian Stanley, Gary Clark and Thornalley were just some of the writer-producers who tasked shoulder-to-shoulder with the songstress to aid in assembling her sophomore set. A total of nineteen tracks were completed for White Lilies Island; twelve went on to be assigned to the collection itself with the remaining seven stationed as B-sides to the three singles it spun off during its commercial lifespan. Imbruglia touches all nineteen selections in a lead or co-scripting capacity, a demonstrable showing of her writing abilities.
Four years had come and gone between Left of the Middle and White Lilies Island—Imbruglia was armed with more than enough adventures to draw upon (narrative wise). Unlike the brash lyrical pose of that inaugural effort, she dually courts an open optimism (“Satellite”) and mercurial inclinations (“Hurricane”). Romantic love—whether in its budding phase on “Wrong Impression” or in full, seductive bloom as heard on “Hurricane”—remains a foundational component to most of the song stories tendered on White Lilies Island.
Still and all, there are existentialist streams of consciousness (“That Day,” “Butterflies”) and engrossing character studies (“Everything Goes,” “Come September”) that lend diversity to the album’s texts. Imbruglia’s thematic balancing act is stunningly efficient, but that equipoise between light and dark aesthetics wasn’t limited solely to the record’s lyrics—it extended toward its production as well.
The alternative tenor favored on her preceding affair is retooled for White Lilies Island. From the sweeping guitar-pop vista of “Beauty on the Fire” through to the folkish splendor of “Talk in Tongues,” an expansive, atmospheric tone is prevalent on these two cuts and every other selection crafted for White Lilies Island. Provided with such awesome sonic canvases, Imbruglia’s approach as a singer is equally as inspired. Her stirring performances on “Do You Love?,” “Goodbye” and “Sunlight” evince an intimacy and power merely grazed on Left of the Middle.
It isn’t surprising then that the remarkable quality of the words and music on White Lilies Island carried through to seven of its outtakes: “Shikaiya (For Billy),” “Just Another Day,” “Always Never,” “Hide Behind the Sun,” “Broken Thread,” “Cold Air,” “Standing There.” Although “Shikaiya (For Billy)” pulled double duty with its appearance on the Japanese iteration of White Lilies Island, overall, this septet was divided up and respectively allocated as B-sides to singles “That Day,” “Wrong Impression” and “Beauty on the Fire.”
A range of sounds will greet the listener on these flipsides; the earthy acoustica of “Always Never,” the piano balladry of “Hide Behind the Sun,” and the dreamy French pop of “Cold Air” emerge as immediate highlights. It’s hoped that if an eventual remaster campaign is ever actioned on Imbruglia’s back catalog, these superlative leftovers will be united to their parent project for wider exposure.
The promotional cycle for White Lilies Island began in October 2001 with the issuance of “That Day” several weeks ahead of it; the long player followed in early November in most international territories. The United States did not receive it until the spring of 2002 where “Wrong Impression,” the record’s second single abroad, served as its first there.
The industry and buying landscape of 2001 was one drastically different than that of 1997: this had immediate commercial consequences for Imbruglia. While White Lilies Island was a distance away from the gargantuan success enjoyed by Left of the Middle, it certainly wasn’t a bust. Gold certifications were awarded to Imbruglia in the United Kingdom and Australia—her principal sales loci. Its singles made appreciable waves in those two cited areas and parts of continental Europe, but out of that triptych, “That Day” and “Wrong Impression” kept Imbruglia safely within the confines of the British Top 10.
White Lilies Island should have been a critical slam dunk, instead it was met with mixed notices. Incredulously, the LP was viewed as inauthentic—an unfortunate, if likely side effect of Imbruglia’s rapid rise from soap darling to hitmaker with Left of the Middle. Shrugging off that hostile punditry, she continued to put forward albums, albeit infrequently: Counting Down the Days (2005), Come to Life (2009), Male (2015) and Firebird (2021). The current triumph of her sixth outing Firebird denotes that the music press is now coming around to exalt Imbruglia’s staying power.
Sweetening this development further has been the broader, inexorable reappraisal of her anterior output—this is particularly true of White Lilies Island. The sample usage of its single “Beauty on the Fire” in Saint Etienne’s “Pond House,” a track lifted from the trio’s tenth studio set I’ve Been Trying to Tell You (2021), signposts that Imbruglia’s material has found a home in the hearts of her devotees and discerning audiophiles alike.
Patience and a predilection for attention to sonic detail has paid off; the cumulative body of work behind Imbruglia today is concrete evidence that she’s come a long way since her days on Ramsey Street. That said, White Lilies Island stands as the finest album in her canon: intricate, lush, substantive and irresistible, it will never fade.
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