Delta Lea Goodrem was born in Sydney on 9 November 1984, and by age seven she had appeared in an American advertisement for the former toy company Galoob, alongside fellow Australian Bec Hewitt. Around the same age she began playing piano, and also took up singing, dancing and acting lessons, appearing in adverts for companies such as Optus and Nesquik, and she also had several minor roles in episodes of Australian television shows, including 'Hey Dad..!', 'A Country Practice', and 'Police Rescue'. At the age of thirteen, she recorded a five-song demo CD, financed through her television work, which was sent to her favourite Australian rules football club Sydney Swans, and they passed it onto talent manager Glenn Wheatley. Wheatley signed Goodrem to an artist development deal with independent record label, Empire Records, and between June 1999 and September 2000 she worked with producers Paul Higgins and Trevor Carter on thirteen tracks for an album, to be called 'Delta'. During the sessions she was described as "an ambitious 15-year-old keen to emulate the pop sound of the Spice Girls, Britney Spears and Mandy Moore." Although most of the tracks were written by Carter, Goodrem co-wrote two and self-wrote the song 'Love'. Higgins took the album to Village Roadshow, which offered to market and distribute it, but the deal was blocked by Goodrem's parents, and the album has yet to surface.
After signing a recording contract with Sony Music, she began work on an album of pop–dance songs, but the first single from it, 'I Don't Care', only peaked at number sixty four on the ARIA Singles Chart in November 2001, and so the album and proposed second single, 'A Year Ago Today', were pushed aside as a result, allowing Goodrem and Sony to re-evaluate her future musical direction. In 2002, she took up the role as shy schoolgirl and aspiring singer Nina Tucker in the popular television soap opera 'Neighbours', which helped re-launch her music career, when the piano-based ballad 'Born to Try' premiered on the show, and reached number one on the ARIA Singles Chart and the New Zealand singles chart, and number three in the UK. Her largely self-penned debut studio album, 'Innocent Eyes', was released on 24 March 2003 in Australia and debuted at number one on the ARIA Album Charts, breaking Australian records previously held by John Farnham's 'Whispering Jack' in 1986, by staying at number one for 29 consecutive weeks. In July, Goodrem was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a form of cancer, and this forced her to take a break from her career to undergo treatment, although singles from 'Innocent Eyes' kept her name in the public domain. In August 1999 she won seven ARIA Music Awards, including "Best Female Artist", surpassing Natalie Imbruglia's previous record of six awards in 1999.
After announcing in late December 2003 that she was in remission from her cancer, Goodrem began work on her second studio album. In March 2004, while she was still undergoing cancer treatment, Higgins and Carter announced plans to release the album they had recorded with the then 15-year-old singer in 2000, igniting a bidding war amongst record companies. However, Goodrem and her family disapproved of the album's release, and a lawsuit was filed, claiming that the album was made up of unfinished demo recordings which were not fit for commercial release. After much coverage in the media, the case was settled in mediation, and in exchange for not releasing the album, Higgins and Carter received an unspecified payout. Her second studio album, 'Mistaken Identity', was released in Australia on 8 November 2004 and debuted at number one on the ARIA Albums chart. The third single from the album was 'Almost Here', a duet with Irish singer and then boyfriend Brian McFadden of Westlife, and it reached number three in the UK and became her seventh ARIA number one. On 15 March 2006, Goodrem performed a new song at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in front of 80,000 spectators, and up to 1.5 billion television viewers worldwide, with 'Together We Are One' being written specifically for the event.
In October 2006, she promoted in Japan with the release of an updated version of 'Innocent Eyes', and the Japan-only single 'Flawed', which reached number one on the Japanese download chart. Goodrem's third studio album, the eponymous 'Delta', was released in Australia on 20 October 2007, and the material was a lot lighter compared to her previous album, which contained a number of songs written about her illness. On 24 November 2011, Goodrem was confirmed to be a part of the judging panel of the Australian version of 'The Voice' which aired in early 2012, coaching alongside Keith Urban, Joel Madden, and Seal. Some of her decisions on the show sparked criticism, with comments she was "all style" and "little substance", but despite that she returned for season two in 2013, again with Madden and Seal, with Ricky Martin replacing Urban. Her fourth studio album, 'Child Of The Universe', was released on 26 October 2012, and debuted at number two on the ARIA Charts, spending ten weeks in the top 50. In November, she recorded a Christmas EP titled 'Christmas', and one of the tracks, 'Blue Christmas', was also featured on the album 'The Spirit of Christmas'. In November 2013 it was announced that Goodrem would not be returning to 'The Voice Australia' for the third season in 2014, but instead chose to be a part of the new Australian version of 'The Voice Kids', saying that this would give her more time on her music career and more time to work on her new studio album, although in 2015 she did return as a judge on 'The Voice Australia', and stayed there for the next six seasons.
On 24 July 2015, Goodrem released 'Wings' as the lead single from her fifth studio album 'Wings Of The Wild', which peaked at number one on the ARIA Charts, and was certified double platinum, and the album followed on 1 July 2016. In 2017 she returned to television in the comedy drama series 'House Husbands', and she also became the V8 Supercars Australia ambassador, promoting the sport and being the official performer at the racing events throughout the year. In early 2021, Goodrem announced the release of her seventh studio album 'Bridge Over Troubled Dreams' for May of that year, alongside an autobiographical and photographic book bearing the same name, but the singles released from this record, and her albums over the previous seven years, no longer featured non-album tracks on the flips, and so this collection of rare singles, b-sides and bonus tracks ends in 2014. Goodrem's repertoire falls under the pop and adult contemporary styles, and heavily features the piano, which she usually plays barefoot while performing live. It has given her a long-lasting and well-respected career, particularly in Australia, but also in the rest of the world, selling over nine million albums globally. In June 2020, she launched the Delta Goodrem Foundation in partnership with St. Vincent's Hospital and The Kinghorn Cancer Centre, with the aim of raising funds for the acceleration of innovative blood cancer research, and if only for that reason, she deserves this three disc collection of her hard to find recordings.
Track listing
Disc I - 2001-2005
01 I Don't Care (single 2001)
02 Hear Me Calling (b-side of 'Lost Without You' 2003)
03 Right There Waiting (b-side of 'Not Me, Not I' 2003)
04 Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (b-side of 'Not Me, Not I' 2003)
05 Lost For Words (b-side of Innocent Eyes' 2003)
06 Here I Am (b-side of 'Predictable' 2003)
07 Love (outtake 2003)
08 Right Here In My Heart (bonus track on the digital edition of 'Delta' 2003)
09 Beautiful Madness (b-side of 'Out Of The Blue' 2004)
10 Visualise (b-side of 'Out Of The Blue' 2004)
11 Nobody Listened (bonus track on the Australian edition of 'Mistaken Identity' 2004)
12 Hollow No More (feat. Brian McFadden) (b-sidem of 'Almost Here' 2005)
Disc II - 2005-2007
01 How A Dream Looks (b-side of 'Mistaken Identity' 2005)
02 Silence Be Heard (b-side of 'Mistaken Identity' 2005)
03 Turn You Away (b-sidem of 'Almost Here' 2005)
04 If I Forget (b-side of 'A Little Too Late' 2005)
05 The Riddle (b-side of 'A Little Too Late' 2005)
06 Flawed (single 2006)
07 Never Fades Away (b-side of 'Flawed' 2006)
08 Together We Are One (single 2006)
09 Take Me Home (b-side of 'In This Life' 2007)
10 Fortune And Love (b-side of 'Believe Again' 2007)
11 Unsure (b-side of 'Believe Again' 2007)
12 Fever (b-side of 'Believe Again' 2007)
13 Breathe In, Breathe Out (bonus track on Japanese edition of 'Delta' 2007)
Disc III - 2008-2014
01 Black Velvet (b-side of 'You Will Only Break My Heart' 2008)
02 Burn For You (b-side of 'I Can't Break It To My Heart' 2008)
03 Edge Of Seventeen (b-side of 'I Can't Break It To My Heart' 2008)
04 I'm Not Ready (solo version of the Michael Bolton duet single 2011)
05 Uncovered (b-side of 'Sitting On Top Of The World' 2012)
06 Waiting Forever (b-side of 'Dancing With A Broken Heart' 2012)
07 Rise (b-side of 'Wish You Were Here' 2012)
08 Daughter (b-side of 'Wish You Were Here' 2012)
09 Alcohol (bonus track on the iTunes edition of 'Child Of The Universe' 2012)
10 No Communication (bonus track on the iTunes edition of 'Child Of The Universe' 2012)
11 Heart Hypnotic (single 2013)
12 Stay (b-side of 'Love...Thy Will Be Done' 2014)
