Instant Karma
Natalie Bergman
I’M NEW HERE
How a sudden tragedy prompted the Wild Belle singer’s gospel-inspired solo reinvention
Natalie Bergman: “Each song is so specific to mylove for my dad”
ROBIN LAANANEN
IN October 2019, Natalie Bergman’s world was turned upside down. She received a call saying that her father and stepmother had been involved in a head-on road traffic collision. A drunk driver had been travelling the wrong way down the highway and crashed into the taxi they were in, killing them and both drivers instantly. Natalie and her brother Elliott – otherwise known as psych-pop duo Wild Belle – cancelled their imminent show at New York’s Radio City Music Hall and travelled back to the family home in Chicago. It’s a moment Bergman recalls with harrowing, pinpoint detail on the devastating “Last Farewell”, the final track of her first solo album, Mercy: “It all ended with the crash/Tell me, heaven, where was your grace?”