Songwriters Anne Preven and Scott Cutler of the LA based band “Ednaswap” wrote “Torn” in 1991 together with Phil Thornalley, with Preven taking inspiration for the devastation chronicled in the song from her work in a mental hospital in New York that dealt with suicidal juveniles as a teenager. It was first recorded two years later in Danish and had its English debut by Ednaswap, but none of this recordings took off.

That changed when Natalie Imbruglia, who was known to a broader audience from the immensely popular Australian soap opera “Neighbours” started a second career as a singer and released a version of the song as her debut single in 1997. Not immediately though, at least in the US, where the song was proposed to a number of record labels and turned down repeatedly – only to have the same people bending over backwards to seal the deal when the song exploded on the UK charts.

Alison Maclean, who shot the video was able to create a very intimate feeling by combining acting (recreating a scene from the 1972 erotic drama “Last Tango in Paris”) with footage from breaks, where the actors were not aware that the camera was still rolling.