Delta Goodrem is gorgeous, can write a hit tune and tells an inspirational tale of fighting off an illness that threatened her life. So it's a little surprising to hear the 23-year-old Australian pop singer talk about all her baggage. Yet with the release of her third studio album, Delta, she's doing just that.
Gone is the ingenue Australians fell in love with from her days on the hit television soap Neighbours. Gone too is the girl whose battle with cancer kept her in the headlines as her songs topped the charts. Now, Goodrem has a home in London, a fiance in former Westlife singer Brian McFadden and a new outlook on life that's seen her come to terms with her celebrity.
'There were a lot of things going on in my life and I felt a lot of pressure as a result of the attention I was receiving,' Goodrem says of her recent past. 'While I was grateful for all the support ... I felt it was really important to shed a lot of that baggage and really embrace the future. I needed to make some changes and bring the focus of attention back to my music.'
Not that her music hasn't been a focus of attention all along - at least in Australia. The first single from her new album, In This Life, was her eighth consecutive No1, according to the Australian Recording Industry Association (Aria). The album's second single, Believe Again, has now become her ninth. The unprecedented number of hit singles is an Aria accolade she stole from Kylie Minogue five records ago.
Add to that two top-selling concert DVDs, the honour of being the first Australian to headline a show at the Sydney Superdome, and a rumoured contract to replace Natalie Imbruglia as the new face of L'Oreal cosmetics and you'd think Delta would have plenty of people ready to carry her baggage.
And she does. In her hotel suite the day after her concert in Hong Kong last week, a coterie of local record executives and handlers are on hand, including dressers, managers and makeup artists.