Just weeks after the Chess Piece was revealed to be Laverne Cox on the latest season of The Masked Singer, the Wednesday night (Nov. 6) episode was full of more surprises when Bluebell was unmasked.
Taking place as part of the Group B finals, the ’60s Night episode kicked off its proceedings with Wasp, Bluebell, and Goo all performing a rendition of The Beach Boys’ “Fun, Fun, Fun”, which hit No. 5 on the Hot 100 upon its 1964 release.
While Wasp went on to pay triubute to Aretha Franklin with a rendition of “Ain’t No Way”, and Goo paid homage to The Animals’ version of “The House of the Rising Sun”, it was Bluebell whose night came to an end following a performance of The Contours’ “Do You Love Me”.
Following an ‘Inventions of the ’60s’ clue revealing an Easy-Bake Oven containing a Vegemite sandwich, the panelists realised that the masked singer must be an Australian. However, following incorrect guesses of Naomi Watts from Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg, Isla Fisher from Robin Thicke, Kylie Minogue from Rita Ora, and Rose Byrne from Ken Jeong, Bluebell’s identity was confirmed to be Natalie Imbruglia.
“You did a great job disguising her voice,” Thicke said of the Australian musician, whose singing previously inspired guesses of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and others. “But you played the game so well. You fooled us.”
Imbruglia first rose to fame as an actress in her native country at the start of the ’90s, launching a music career with a cover of Ednaswap’s “Torn” as her debut single in 1997. The track was a global hit, selling more than four million copies globally, and topped the Billboard Radio Songs, Adult Pop Airplay, and Pop Airplay charts.
The song didn’t chart on the Hot 100 due to a lack of a physical commercial release, but did reach No. 12 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, while its corresponding album, Left of the Middle, reached No. 10 on the Billboard 200.
Since her auspicious debut, Imbruglia has released a total of six albums across her career, with 2021’s Firebird arriving as her most recent.
