It’s Delta Week on Noisey Australia! To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of her seminal debut Innocent Eyes, we’ll be running Delta Goodrem-related writing every day.
Generally speaking, there are only a couple of reasons to perform a tribute to someone at an awards show. Usually, it’ll be because they’ve died. Sometimes, it’ll be because an artist has reached a huge career milestone. Not in 2003, though! At the 2003 ARIA Awards, Savage Garden’s Darren Hayes performed a tribute to Delta that was introduced with a four-minute obituary reel. It’s just as cooked as it sounds. The video begins with clips from Delta’s childhood, before moving on to give a recap of her (very short til that point) career. It ends with newspaper clippings about Delta’s cancer struggle, and they don’t show a live shot of Delta –– who is alive, mostly well, and literally at the awards –– until after Hayes finishes his performance. If you tuned in during this performance, you’d probably assume Delta was dead.
Videos by VICE
Of every hideously tacky performance, tribute and speech that’s graced the ARIAs stage, this has to be one of the most bizarre. Please, on day 4 of #DeltaWeek, enjoy this bizarre early-2000s moment of Delta Culture:
