When it comes to writing music, Natalie Imbruglia needs constant motion. "I walk around in circles to get the melodies, to catch them," the Australian singer says. "So if I go and work with someone new and they have a shoebox-sized studio, I'm like, 'How am I going to do my circles?'" Imbruglia doesn't know exactly how many laps she completed during the making of her dancefloor-ready seventh album, Algorithm.
Inspired by Talking Heads and Grace Jones, it's a record whose shimmering surfaces disguise lyrics of deep emotional complexity. On Who Dimmed The Lights, the 51-year-old addresses how her mental health "unravelled" as she went through perimenopause. "It was really tough," she says.
"Perimenopause is not just about hormones. It's to do with your mind. Your brain needs oestrogen to function, so when the levels fluctuate, it affects your spatial awareness.
"I've never walked into so many doorways. The brain fog's quite jarring." Doorways weren't the only problem. Imbruglia says perimenopause exacerbated her ADHD, which she was diagnosed with in midlife.
Other symptoms included heightened anxiety and anger. "You start seeing an expression on other people of, like, 'What's happening to you?' "I was seeing that face a lot, and it's to do with your ability to process [information]. Your fuse is shorter." Things came to a head on tour, where her stage fright went into overdrive and she suffered "just terrible, terrible anxiety".
"I become sensitive to sound, so it feels like you're screaming at me if you're talking normally," she says. "I can't process questions very well. I act twitchy and weird, and it seemed to get worse with perimenopause." She says her behaviour became a "nightmare" for her team.
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