Who recorded it first

Torn

Not a Natalie Imbruglia original — and she didn’t write it

Almost everyone takes ‘Torn’ for a Natalie Imbruglia original — a song she wrote and sang first. Neither is true. It was written in 1991 by Scott Cutler, Anne Preven and Phil Thornalley, and the first recording was a Danish-language version, ‘Brændt’, released by Lis Sørensen in 1993. The first English recording came from the band Ednaswap in 1995. Imbruglia’s 1997 version — the one the world knows — is a cover of a cover.

The record

Who recorded it first

First recording
Lis Sørensen, 1993 (Danish, ‘Brændt’)
Written by
Scott Cutler, Anne Preven & Phil Thornalley, 1991
First English recording
Ednaswap, 1995
Made famous by
Natalie Imbruglia, 1997 (a cover)

How we traced it

‘Torn’ was written in 1991 by Scott Cutler and Anne Preven with producer Phil Thornalley, originally as a solo song for Preven Wikipedia ↗.

Before any English-language release, the song was recorded in Danish: Lis Sørensen’s ‘Brændt’ came out in 1993, the first recording of the song to reach the public Lis Sørensen ↗.

The first English version was recorded by Ednaswap, the Los Angeles band Cutler and Preven were in, on their 1995 self-titled debut. Natalie Imbruglia covered it in 1997 — and because hers was the enormous hit, the world credited her with a song she neither wrote nor recorded first Ednaswap ↗.

Wikipedia — the song’s full recording history
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Fact-check

The attribution problem

This one carries a double error: not only is Natalie Imbruglia’s 1997 record a cover rather than an original, but she is also widely, wrongly, believed to have written the song. Both beliefs are false.

The beliefcover, not original

‘Natalie Imbruglia wrote and sang it first’

Her 1997 version is a cover, and she is not a credited writer. The song was written in 1991 and first recorded in 1993 the history ↗.

The first recordingfirst to record it

Lis Sørensen, 1993

The earliest recording was in Danish — ‘Brændt’ — released four years before Imbruglia’s single. The first English recording came from Ednaswap in 1995.

The writersneither the famous singer

Cutler, Preven & Thornalley

The song was written in 1991 by three people, none of them Imbruglia. Authorship and performance are different things, and here the famous performer holds neither the writing credit nor the first recording.

Written in 1991 by Scott Cutler, Anne Preven and Phil Thornalley, first recorded in Danish by Lis Sørensen in 1993, and made famous — but neither written nor originated — by Natalie Imbruglia in 1997 the record ↗.

Context

Why the cover ate the original

A cover eclipses its source most completely when the source never had a moment of its own. ‘Torn’ had two quiet earlier lives — a Danish-language recording in 1993 and an English one by Ednaswap in 1995 — and neither was a hit. When Natalie Imbruglia’s version arrived in 1997 there was no famous original occupying the public’s memory, so hers simply became the version.

What makes this case unusual is the second layer of the mistake. People do not merely think Imbruglia recorded it first; they think she wrote it — a confident, wrong assumption that a song sung with that much feeling must have come from the singer. It came from three writers, in 1991, and reached the world in Danish before it ever reached it in English.

The four stages, in order
  • Cutler, Preven and Thornalley write the song, 1991.
  • Lis Sørensen records it in Danish as ‘Brændt’, released 1993 — the first recording.
  • Ednaswap record the first English version, on their 1995 debut album.
  • Natalie Imbruglia covers it in 1997 → a worldwide hit and her debut single.
  • The public credits Imbruglia with writing and originating a song she joined last.
The world learned this song in Danish, from a singer almost no one connects to it, four years before the hit.

The first to record it

Lis Sørensen

b. 1955 · Danish singer

Lis Sørensen (b. 1955) is a Danish singer whose career stretches back to the 1970s. In 1993 she recorded ‘Brændt’, a Danish-language version of ‘Torn’ — the very first recording of a song that would circle the globe four years later under a different name and language. It is one of pop’s stranger footnotes: the original of a worldwide hit sung in Danish, by a name almost no one outside Denmark connects to it.

The first English recording

Ednaswap

American rock band · active 1993–1999

Ednaswap were a Los Angeles alt-rock band whose members included Scott Cutler and Anne Preven — two of the three people who wrote ‘Torn’. They cut the first English-language recording on their 1995 debut album. Their version was faithful but little-heard; the song they wrote and recorded became famous only when someone else sang it.

Popularly credited as the original

Natalie Imbruglia

b. 1975 · Australian singer and actress

Natalie Imbruglia released her cover of ‘Torn’ in 1997 as her debut single, and it became so ubiquitous that most listeners assume she wrote it and sang it first. She did neither — though co-writer Phil Thornalley produced her version, which is genuinely hers to be proud of. The only error is one of authorship and chronology: a 1997 cover mistaken for the source of a song written in 1991.

The songwriters

Cutler, Preven & Thornalley

Scott Cutler, Anne Preven & Phil Thornalley · wrote it 1991

Scott Cutler and Anne Preven wrote ‘Torn’ in 1991 with English producer Phil Thornalley, initially as a solo song for Preven. Cutler and Preven later recorded it with their band Ednaswap; Thornalley went on to produce the Imbruglia hit. They are the figures the song’s fame obscures — the authors whose credit survives every version, even as the public hands their song to a singer who joined it last.