Touring with Shania Twain and Neighbours legacy

“When Shania Twain calls and asks if you want to go on tour, you grab your cowgirl hat and you go on tour.”

It wasn’t a call that Australian singer Delta Goodrem was expecting, but it’s why she’s found herself in Northern Ireland.

She had just performed at London’s Mighty Hoopla festival and was about to head back to Australia to finish her new album when the call from Shania came in to support her on tour.

BBC News NI caught up with the former Neighbours star backstage after her very wet and windy set at Belsonic 2024.

“Oh my gosh, I had a ball, even with the rain,” she said.

“There was a group of five women all in different colour raincoats, and they were making sure they were moving and dancing, and I was like ‘yes, girls, yes!’

“I felt like we all just having a great time; we kept warm, we danced, we sang, sure it was just a bit of rain.”

Delta Goodrem first came to attention in the UK back in the early 2000s when she played Nina Tucker in the Australian TV soap Neighbours.

Despite leaving the show more than 20 years ago, fans still want to talk about it.

“The craziest part is I don’t get that back at home, so when I come here people want to talk about Neighbours,” she said.

“It takes me back to a different era, and whatever the connection is, or however we met and in the UK that was through Nina, it’s a big part of my history.”

She moved into music following the likes of fellow Neighbours stars Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Natalie Imbruglia, and Holly Valance.

Her debut album, Innocent Eyes, released in 2003, sold more than four million copies worldwide.

It stemmed singles like Born to Try, Lost Without You, and Innocent Eyes, which all enjoyed chart success in the UK as well as Australia.

After all this time, the singer said it came as a surprise to her that people still followed her music.

“I had no idea people were still singing the songs and have held them in their hearts, and for that I’m humbly grateful.

“Music is the soundtrack to people’s lives; the songs remind them of whatever they were going through, they are time portals.”

The Covid pandemic and the lockdown in Australia gave her a chance to rethink things.

After spending nine years as a mentor on The Voice Australia, this tour marks the first time in several years that she has performed outside the country.

“Covid happened; it changed everything, and I just said: ‘I’m going back out into the world’.”

She started acting again and played the lead role in the Netflix film Love is in the Air, which was streamed more than 20 million times in its first two weeks of release.

She started her own record label, ATLED Records with fiancé Matthew Copley and toured the United States with the Backstreet Boys.

“We toured for like three months and I just found my passion for it again,” she said.

She recorded two new upbeat songs, Hearts on the Run and Back to Your Heart, a far cry from the original piano ballads her audiences are used to.

In September she will play BBC Radio 2 in the Park in Preston alongside Sting and Craig David, after both of her new singles were records of the week on the station.

Ms Goodrem will also support Shania Twain at the Stirling Summer Sessions 2024 in Scotland, Lytham Festival in the north-west of England, Chepstow Summer Sessions in Wales, and BST Hyde Park in London over the next few days.

“As fate would have it, I believe now is the perfect time to be back on the road and getting to do what I love to do,” she said.

“I’m sad it took me so long to get back here, but I’ve sort of been healing that, but now it’s just time to rock ‘n’ roll, have fun, be reunited, and sing together again.”

And the singer promises it won’t be the last time she is in Northern Ireland.

“Belfast isn’t getting rid of me now,” she said.

“I’m so thankful for the warm reception and everyone singing the songs; I’m pumped, and it’s great to be here.

“But maybe speak to the weather for me next time, would you please?”