photographY HOLLY WARD
STYLING JANA POKORNY
WORDS Kate Lancaster
dawn
dmittedly, I had my own agenda for this interview with Delta Goodrem. As a millennial teen, Innocent Eyes occupied the prime Disc 1 slot in my multi-CD stereo – and if that rather niche description fails to convey the album’s generational gravitas, consider the fact that one in every four Australian households had a copy.
As she enters a new chapter, Delta Goodrem is closing the distance between who she was, who Australia believes her to be and who she has become.
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Years before confessional pop turned lyrical vulnerability into a vehicle for market positioning, Innocent Eyes was an early blueprint for the female singer-songwriter as narrator. It was diary pages set to the cascading keys of Goodrem’s piano, melodic portraits of heartbreak, hope and girlhood that glittered with the wondrous sincerity of adolescence.
Growing up in Sydney’s Hills district, Goodrem was working towards a career in music and acting from the age of eight. At 15, she signed with Sony and released her first single, “I Don’t Care”, a Y2K teen pop track that wasn’t a hit but the experience gave Goodrem her first sense of artistic agency. Despite pressure to work on the music video with the same director used by other Sony acts, Goodrem successfully fought to collaborate with director Anthony Rose instead. “We did the styling together, we created it as a team,” she says. “It was one of the first times I really felt heard.” Despite the disappointing chart performance of “I Don’t Care”, Goodrem took what she’d learnt into the next phase of her career. Her breakthrough ultimately came with a starring role as music hopeful Nina Tucker on Neighbours and her debut album, Innocent Eyes, which would go multi-platinum and make Goodrem a household name. It was here, at the precise moment her star was exploding, that an 18-year-old Goodrem received a shocking diagnosis of Hodgkin lymphoma.
“I feel like I’m in my wife era, my grown-up era ... I feel like I’m in the most joyful moment of my life.”
Fendi shirt, $3250, and pants, $3250; Temple of the Sun necklaces (from top), $429 and $529; Aris Geldis necklace (long), $489, at Husk; stylist’s bra.
Delta Goodrem wears Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello blazer, shirt and necklace all POA.
CREDITS
Talent: delta goodrem
Editor: Georgie McCourt
Creative director: rebecca rhodes
interview: Kate Lancaster
PHOTOGRAPHER: Holly Ward/Vivien’s Creative
stylist: Jana Pokorny/Kaz Kingdon Productions
Hair: Daren Borthwick/The Artist Group
Makeup: Mia Hawkswell
Production: Robyn Fay-Perkins Shot on location at The Beach House, Gerroa; beachhousegerroa.com.au.
The date of July 8, 2003, remains a “where-were-you-when” moment for many Australians, as news of Goodrem’s diagnosis made headlines across the globe and generated an outpouring of support for the young star. Goodrem’s latest single had just become her third to top the charts, while Innocent Eyes had been number one for three months. She had been gearing up for a promotional tour in Europe, with plans to launch her career in the US market. For a life-threatening illness to collide with the peak of Goodrem’s ascent felt particularly cruel, as she was forced to step back from a career she was only just beginning to inhabit.
Goodrem immediately started chemotherapy and radiation treatment, spending months in hospital. The side-effects of her treatment meant she was able to do very little promotion for subsequent single releases, but she watched from her hospital bed as each went to number one. The public rallied around her, with endless tributes dubbing the Neighbours star “our Delta”. Around this time, I recall opening an issue of Dolly magazine to a layout that looked like a letter. Etchings of butterflies framed the blank page, where readers could pen a get-well message and send it to Sony Music’s designated “Get Well Delta” PO box. She was praised as our national sweetheart, yes, but she was also framed by it. As media coverage gently mythologised Goodrem as the beautiful girl bravely battling cancer, I was left wondering how the girl at the centre really felt.
Two decades on, I finally get to ask.
Despite the intimacy they share through performance, Goodrem will continue to keep most aspects of her life with Copley sacred – including the details of their wedding. “We all have our boundaries,” she says with a shrug. “I grew up watching artists like Céline and Mariah, when there was still a sense of privacy. I’ve always tried to find my own balance in that.” It’s a balance she’s fought hard for, having come up in what was arguably the most unforgiving era in modern celebrity culture.
Back then, paparazzi culture was at its peak, tabloids were operating with impunity and young female stars were often the targets of cruel speculation. Over the course of her career, Goodrem’s personal life was pored over, her appearance picked apart and her every expression analysed. She was celebrated as the “good girl” during her cancer battle, only to have that same sincerity later seen as suspicious and calculated – too perfect and polished to be genuine. Later, during her time as a coach on The Voice, her composure and her enthusiasm would both be highlighted as examples of her insincerity, which I imagine would be incredibly confusing to navigate.
Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello blazer, shirt, pants, necklace and bracelets, all POA; Temple of the Sun earrings, $229 (worn throughout).
Zimmermann top, $795, and pants, $875; Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello bracelets, POA.
Michael Kors dress, POA; Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello bracelets, POA.
Delta wears Husk coat, $799; Michael Kors dress, POA; Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello bracelets, POA.
Delta's
There’s affection in the way she talks about the creative process behind the album – not just its emotive subject matter, but the spontaneity of the arrangements. “I think I was allowed a lot of freedom in the studio,” she reflects. “I wasn’t even on click half the time. I’d just be riffing on the piano, and we kept it in. That freedom, that was real.”
Where she’s at now is somewhere closer to ease. “I feel strong, I feel positive and I feel quite free,” she says. “I feel excited and empowered and impassioned to create and to enjoy it.” In 2023, Goodrem launched ATLED Records after more than two decades signed to a major label. “I’d been signed longer than I hadn’t in my life,” she says. “It felt like the right time. The world had shifted, and I’d shifted too. I wanted to take what I’d learnt and build something that made sense for what’s next.”
Rachel wears Christian Dior.
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hen we speak over Zoom, Goodrem is in London, riding high after wrapping two shows at the Hackney Empire for the Mistaken Identity: A Night of Celebration tour – a string of performances to mark
the 20th anniversary of her sophomore album, which emerged in the aftermath of her cancer treatment. The tone of the record was markedly darker, more theatrical and emotionally jagged. For an audience still attached to the soft, diaristic depictions of love and girlhood that formed Goodrem’s first album, Mistaken Identity was unapologetically raw. The sonic and thematic evolution took many by surprise, but she sees it now for what it really was: a relic of her survival.
“When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see the long-haired, piano-playing girl anymore. I was somebody who was in the fight,” she remembers. Across the album, her lyrics were unflinching and self-aware, as Goodrem grappled with mortality and anger, resilience and hope, and the growing dissonance between public expectation and her own private reality. “The girl I used to be has a terrible case of mistaken identity,” she sings in the title track, effectively dismantling the image of “the nice girl next door” that Australia had so eagerly projected onto her. Goodrem rejected the sweet young starlet that we’d claimed her as, instead painting herself as the young woman “who gets cut like a knife”. So, yeah, it was heavy.
Returning to the album 20 years on offered Goodrem a new respect for the girl who wrote it. “I was actually really proud. I thought, ‘Wow, I can’t believe how open I was,’” she says. “I didn’t play those songs for a long time, you know? I hadn’t really gone back into it. But now, getting to actually play that album live in London and seeing people sing some of the songs that I’d never been able to perform here was magical – it was like a full circle moment.” Where once the album was misunderstood – perhaps by even Goodrem herself at times – it now reads as something closer to the boundless creative she’s always been. “I actually thought the album was even more intricate than I’d remembered,” she reflects. “It had so much gravity, so much exploration of these feelings.”
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’ve met Goodrem briefly over the years at her fragrance launches – sidenote, because her scents are actually top-shelf – and while she is as warm, gracious and self-effacing as ever, she’s particularly relaxed in this
moment. It’s the result, she jokes, of some overdue “annual leave” that she’ll be enjoying over the coming weeks. Goodrem flashes a coy smile at the significance of this long-awaited break. The subtext, of course, is that it coincides with her wedding to longtime partner and musical collaborator Matthew Copley.
Shortly after our interview, Goodrem travelled to Malta for an intimate, multi-day celebration with close friends and family. The couple wed in the same place that Copley proposed almost two years earlier, which holds ties to his heritage. Guests included Goodrem’s mother, Lea, brother, Trent, and friends of the pair, such as presenter (and Goodrem’s former LA roommate) Renee Bargh and entertainment reporter Richard Wilkins. In the days after the ceremony, tabloid snaps captured the newlyweds drinking champagne aboard a yacht, with an elated Goodrem jumping off the deck into the Mediterranean alongside her new husband.
Goodrem and Copley met through music, with Copley soon becoming a permanent fixture in the singer’s life – first as her guitarist, then eventually her partner, forming a dynamic that Goodrem credits with deepening their connection. “I think that’s what real love is,” she says. “When someone truly sees you – and you see them – you both become even more who you already were in your heart. I feel like I’m becoming my full self, because I have someone who really sees who I am, and likewise. It creates a sense of home.”
Their love language is, in many ways, musical. “There’s trust, there’s harmony, there’s the connection – and that all plays out on stage,” says Goodrem. The star is protective of her private life and rarely discusses her relationship publicly, but her bond with Copley is evident when the pair are playing music on stage. “When people come to my shows, it’s like they’re coming over to our house. We’re inviting them in. Matt’s doing what he does best, I’m doing what I love, and we get to meet the audience there – in that shared energy.”
Christian Dior dress, $13,500, briefs, POA, necklace, $5800, and bracelet, $2900.
To my eyes, the contradictory narratives around Goodrem reflect a broad (and very familiar) cultural pattern that tends to place unattainable expectations upon women in the public eye. Goodrem was assigned the nice girl archetype before time afforded her the chance to define who she was for herself. It’s part of what leads me to suggest, carefully, that Mistaken Identity – the title of Goodrem’s second album – could be considered prophetic, that perhaps it resonates with the times that she’s felt misunderstood throughout her career.
Goodrem pauses, considering my theory. “That’s a good observation,” she offers diplomatically. “I think you have to be careful what your art says, because then you definitely go through it.” She’s not dismissive, but she doesn’t frame herself as a victim either. I question if my own internalised indignation at the media’s treatment of my teen idol had, ironically, distorted my perception of Goodrem, assigning weight to things she’d already long made peace with.
“It’s interesting, because over a career that spans 20 years, I’ve seen how people come in and out of understanding,” she says. “And you also kind of go, ‘Hang on, wait – I’ve been doing this forever.’” She shrugs. “There have been chapters where maybe perceptions ran away from me: 2005 was a confusing chapter, for sure. And then obviously when I joined The Voice, that was a unique moment in time. But I’m proud to rise above and continue to weather those moments.” She will concede, however, that female celebrities are treated far better today than they had been when she first found fame. “Oh, definitely.”
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n set for our cover shoot, the singer remains gracious despite the rainy conditions, sinking further into the warmth of the Husk coat that shields her tall frame from the icy wind. By her own admission,
a challenging shoot would hardly register given the personal and professional storms that she has weathered. Of course, she instantly charmed the crew upon her arrival that morning, having procured hot cinnamon doughnuts from the nearby Berry Donut Van – a detour she later insists is non-negotiable. “You can’t go that way from Sydney without stopping.”
I ask Goodrem if she feels protective towards that teenager we first met almost 25 years ago in “I Don’t Care”. The thought clearly stirs something. “I’m going to get emotional,” she says, laughing and clutching her chest for dramatic effect. “Because I actually feel really close to her now. Like, closer than I’ve ever felt. I’m the most connected I’ve ever been to that young girl who was just figuring it out in the beginning.”
At 40, Goodrem is entering a new chapter of marriage and creative independence. “I feel like I’m in my wife era, my grown-up era,” she says. She hints at a new addition to her popular fragrance line at Chemist Warehouse, and she continues to run the Delta Goodrem Foundation to provide support for individuals facing illness. And, yes, she’s working on new music. I ponder how this period of her life will influence the songs to come. “I’ll have to let you know. I haven’t written a full album in this chapter yet!” Goodrem replies. She’s excited about what’s next. “I feel like I’m in the most joyful moment of my life.” There’s certainly no mistaking that.
Delta wears Husk coat, $799; Michael Kors dress, POA; Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello bracelets, POA; Monika Ruggerino rings (left index finger, from top), $1200 and $2700, and (left pinky) $4500 and $4500; Cushla Whiting ring (left ring finger), $6800; (right hand) Goodrem’s own ring. (All rings worn throughout.)