Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the format of e-mail to support:

Text in character sets other than ASCII

Non-text attachments

Message bodies with multiple parts

Header information in non-ASCII character sets

MIME's use, however, has grown beyond describing the content of e-mail to describing content type in general, including for the web (see Internet media type).

Virtually all human-written Internet e-mail and a fairly large proportion of automated e-mail is transmitted via SMTP in MIME format. Internet e-mail is so closely associated with the SMTP and MIME standards that it is sometimes called SMTP/MIME e-mail.

The content types defined by MIME standards are also of importance outside of e-mail, such as in communication protocols like HTTP for the World Wide Web. HTTP requires that data be transmitted in the context of e-mail-like messages, although the data most often is not actually e-mail.

MIME is specified in six linked RFC memoranda: RFC 2045, RFC 2046, RFC 2047, RFC 4288, RFC 4289 and RFC 2049, which together define the specifications.

Introduction

The basic Internet e-mail transmission protocol, SMTP, supports only 7-bit ASCII characters (see also 8BITMIME). This effectively limits Internet e-mail to messages which, when transmitted, include only the characters sufficient for writing a small number of languages, primarily English. Other languages based on the Latin alphabet typically include diacritics not supported in 7-bit ASCII, meaning text in these languages cannot be correctly represented in basic e-mail.

MIME defines mechanisms for sending other kinds of information in e-mail. These include text in languages other than English using character encodings other than ASCII, and 8-bit binary content such as files containing images, sounds, movies, and computer programs. MIME is also a fundamental component of communication protocols such as HTTP, which requires that data be transmitted in the context of e-mail-like messages even though the data might not (and usually doesn't) actually have anything to do with e-mail. Mapping messages into and out of MIME format is typically done automatically by an e-mail client or by mail servers when sending or receiving Internet (SMTP/MIME) e-mail.

The basic format of Internet e-mail is defined in RFC 5322, which is an updated version of RFC 2822 and RFC 822. These standards specify the familiar formats for text e-mail headers and body and rules pertaining to commonly used header fields such as "To:", "Subject:", "From:", and "Date:". MIME defines a collection of e-mail headers for specifying additional attributes of a message including content type, and defines a set of transfer encodings which can be used to represent 8-bit binary data using characters from the 7-bit ASCII character set. MIME also specifies rules for encoding non-ASCII characters in e-mail message headers, such as "Subject:", allowing these header fields to contain non-English characters.

MIME is extensible. Its definition includes a method to register new content types and other MIME attribute values.

The goals of the MIME definition included requiring no changes to existent e-mail servers and allowing plain text e-mail to function in both directions with existing clients. These goals were achieved by using additional RFC 822-style headers for all MIME message attributes and by making the MIME headers optional with default values ensuring a non-MIME message is interpreted correctly by a MIME-capable client. A simple MIME text message is therefore likely to be interpreted correctly by a non-MIME client although if it has e-mail headers the non-MIME client won't know how to interpret. Similarly, if the quoted printable transfer encoding (see below) is used, the ASCII part of the message will be intelligible to users with non-MIME clients.

MIME headers

MIME-Version

The presence of this header indicates the message is MIME-formatted. The value is typically "1.0" so this header appears as MIME-Version: 1.0 The current MIME version is "1.1". It should be noted that implementers have attempted to change the version number in the past and the change had unforeseen results. It was decided at an IETF meeting to leave the version number as is even though there have been many updates and versions of MIME.

Content-ID

The Content-ID header is primarily of use in multi-part messages (as discussed below); a Content-ID is a unique identifier for a message part, allowing it to be referred to (e.g., in IMG tags of an HTML message allowing the inline display of attached images). The content ID is contained within angle brackets in the Content-ID header. Here is an example:

Content-ID: <5.31.32252.1057009685@server01.example.net>

The standards don't really have a lot to say about exactly what is in a Content-ID; they're only supposed to be globally and permanently unique (meaning that no two are the same, even when generated by different people in different times and places). To achieve this, some conventions have been adopted; one of them is to include an at sign (@), with the hostname of the computer which created the content ID to the right of it. This ensures the content ID is different from any created by other computers (well, at least it is when the originating computer has a unique Internet hostname; if, as sometimes happens, an anonymous machine inserts something generic like localhost, uniqueness is no longer guaranteed). Then, the part to the left of the at sign is designed to be unique within that machine; a good way to do this is to append several constantly-changing strings that programs have access to. In this case, four different numbers were inserted, with dots between them: the rightmost one is a timestamp of the number of seconds since January 1, 1970, known as the Unix epoch; to the left of it is the process ID of the program that generated the message (on servers running Unix or Linux, each process has a number which is unique among the processes in progress at any moment, though they do repeat over time); to the left of that is a count of the number of messages generated so far by the current process; and the leftmost number is the number of parts in the current message that have been generated so far. Put together, these guarantee that the content ID will never repeat; even if multiple messages are generated within the same second, they either have different process IDs or a different count of messages generated by the same process.

That's just an example of how a unique content ID can be generated; different programs do it differently. It's only necessary that they remain unique, a requirement that is necessary to ensure that, even if a bunch of different messages are joined together as part of a bigger multi-part message (as happens when a message is forwarded as an attachment, or assembled into a MIME-format digest), you won't have two parts with the same content ID, which would be likely to confuse mail programs greatly.

There's a similar header called Message-ID which assigns a unique identifier to the message as a whole; this is not actually part of the MIME standards, since it can be used on non-MIME as well as MIME messages. If the originating mail program doesn't add a message ID, a server handling the message later on probably will, since a number of programs (both clients and servers) want every message to have one to keep track of them. Some headers discussed in the Other Headers article make use of message IDs.

When referenced in the form of a Web URI, content IDs and message IDs are placed within the URI schemes cid and mid respectively, without the angle brackets:

cid:5.31.32252.1057009685@server01.example.net

Content-Type

This header indicates the Internet media type of the message content, consisting of a type and subtype, for example Content-Type: text/plain

Through the use of the multipart type, MIME allows messages to have parts arranged in a tree structure where the leaf nodes are any non-multipart content type and the non-leaf nodes are any of a variety of multipart types. This mechanism supports:

simple text messages using text/plain (the default value for "Content-Type: ")

text plus attachments (multipart/mixed with a text/plain part and other non-text parts). A MIME message including an attached file generally indicates the file's original name with the "Content-disposition:" header, so the type of file is indicated both by the MIME content-type and the (usually OS-specific) filename extension

reply with original attached (multipart/mixed with a text/plain part and the original message as a message/rfc822 part)

alternative content, such as a message sent in both plain text and another format such as HTML (multipart/alternative with the same content in text/plain and text/html forms)

image, audio, video and application (for example, image/jpeg, audio/mp3, video/mp4, and application/msword and so on)

many other message constructs

Content-Disposition

The original MIME specifications only described the structure of mail messages. They did not address the issue of presentation styles. The content-disposition header field was added in RFC 2183 to specify the presentation style. A MIME part can have:

an inline content-disposition, which means that it should be automatically displayed when the message is displayed, or

an attachment content-disposition, in which case it is not displayed automatically and requires some form of action from the user to open it.

In addition to the presentation style, the content-disposition header also provides fields for specifying the name of the file, the creation date and modification date, which can be used by the reader's mail user agent to store the attachment.

The following example is taken from RFC 2183, where the header is defined Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=genome.jpeg; modification-date="Wed, 12 February 1997 16:29:51 -0500";

The filename may be encoded as defined by RFC 2231.

As of 2010, a good majority of mail user agents do not follow this prescription fully. The widely used Mozilla Thunderbird mail client makes its own decisions about which MIME parts should be automatically displayed, ignoring the content-disposition headers in the messages. It also sends out newly composed messages with inline content-disposition for all MIME parts. Most users are unaware of how to set the content-disposition to attachment. Many mail user agents also send messages with the file name in the name parameter of the content-type header instead of the filename parameter of the content-disposition header. This practice is discouraged.

Content-Transfer-Encoding

In June 1992, MIME (RFC 1341, since made obsolete by RFC 2045) defined a set of methods for representing binary data in ASCII text format. The content-transfer-encoding: MIME header has 2-sided significance:

#It indicates whether or not a binary-to-text encoding scheme has been used on top of the original encoding as specified within the Content-Type header, and #If such a binary-to-text encoding method has been used it states which one.

The RFC and the IANA's list of transfer encodings define the values shown below, which are not case sensitive. Note that '7bit', '8bit', and 'binary' mean that no binary-to-text encoding on top of the original encoding was used. In these cases, the header is actually redundant for the e-mail client to decode the message body, but it may still be useful as an indicator of what type of object is being sent. Values 'quoted-printable' and 'base64' tell the e-mail client that a binary-to-text encoding scheme was used and that appropriate initial decoding is necessary before the message can be read with its original encoding (e.g. UTF-8).

Suitable for use with normal SMTP:

*7bit – up to 998 octets per line of the code range 1..127 with CR and LF (codes 13 and 10 respectively) only allowed to appear as part of a CRLF line ending. This is the default value.

*quoted-printable – used to encode arbitrary octet sequences into a form that satisfies the rules of 7bit. Designed to be efficient and mostly human readable when used for text data consisting primarily of US-ASCII characters but also containing a small proportion of bytes with values outside that range.

*base64 – used to encode arbitrary octet sequences into a form that satisfies the rules of 7bit. Designed to be efficient for non-text 8 bit data. Sometimes used for text data that frequently uses non-US-ASCII characters.

Suitable for use with SMTP servers that support the 8BITMIME SMTP extension:

*8bit – up to 998 octets per line with CR and LF (codes 13 and 10 respectively) only allowed to appear as part of a CRLF line ending.

Suitable only for use with SMTP servers that support the BINARYMIME SMTP extension (RFC 3030):

*binary – any sequence of octets.

There is no encoding defined which is explicitly designed for sending arbitrary binary data through SMTP transports with the 8BITMIME extension. Thus base64 or quoted-printable (with their associated inefficiency) must sometimes still be used. This restriction does not apply to other uses of MIME such as Web Services with MIME attachments or MTOM

==Encoded-Word== Since RFC 2822, message header names and values are always ASCII characters; values that contain non-ASCII data must use the MIME encoded-word syntax (RFC 2047) instead of a literal string. This syntax uses a string of ASCII characters indicating both the original character encoding (the "charset") and the content-transfer-encoding used to map the bytes of the charset into ASCII characters.

The form is: "=?charset?encoding?encoded text?=".

charset may be any character set registered with IANA. Typically it would be the same charset as the message body.

encoding can be either "Q" denoting Q-encoding that is similar to the quoted-printable encoding, or "B" denoting base64 encoding.

encoded text is the Q-encoded or base64-encoded text.

Difference between Q-encoding and quoted-printable

The ASCII codes for the question mark ("?") and equals sign ("=") may not be represented directly as they are used to delimit the encoded-word. The ASCII code for space may not be represented directly because it could cause older parsers to split up the encoded word undesirably. To make the encoding smaller and easier to read the underscore is used to represent the ASCII code for space creating the side effect that underscore cannot be represented directly. Use of encoded words in certain parts of headers imposes further restrictions on which characters may be represented directly.

For example,

Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=A1Hola,_se=F1or!?=

is interpreted as "Subject: ¡Hola, señor!".

The encoded-word format is not used for the names of the headers (for example Subject). These header names are always in English in the raw message. When viewing a message with a non-English e-mail client, the header names are usually translated by the client.

Multipart messages

A MIME multipart message contains a boundary in the "Content-Type: " header; this boundary, which must not occur in any of the parts, is placed between the parts, and at the beginning and end of the body of the message, as follows:

MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="frontier"

This is a message with multiple parts in MIME format. --frontier Content-Type: text/plain

This is the body of the message. --frontier Content-Type: application/octet-stream Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

PGh0bWw+CiAgPGhlYWQ+CiAgPC9oZWFkPgogIDxib2R5PgogICAgPHA+VGhpcyBpcyB0aGUg Ym9keSBvZiB0aGUgbWVzc2FnZS48L3A+CiAgPC9ib2R5Pgo8L2h0bWw+Cg== --frontier--

Each part consists of its own content header (zero or more Content- header fields) and a body. Multipart content can be nested. The content-transfer-encoding of a multipart type must always be "7bit", "8bit" or "binary" to avoid the complications that would be posed by multiple levels of decoding. The multipart block as a whole does not have a charset; non-ASCII characters in the part headers are handled by the Encoded-Word system, and the part bodies can have charsets specified if appropriate for their content-type.

Notes:

Before the first boundary is an area that is ignored by MIME-compliant clients. This area is generally used to put a message to users of old non-MIME clients.

It is up to the sending mail client to choose a boundary string that doesn't clash with the body text. Typically this is done by inserting a long random string.

The last boundary must have two hyphens at the end.

Multipart subtypes

The MIME standard defines various multipart-message subtypes, which specify the nature of the message parts and their relationship to one another. The subtype is specified in the "Content-Type" header of the overall message. For example, a multipart MIME message using the digest subtype would have its Content-Type set as "multipart/digest".

The RFC initially defined 4 subtypes: mixed, digest, alternative and parallel. A minimally compliant application must support mixed and digest; other subtypes are optional. Applications must treat unrecognised subtypes as "multipart/mixed". Additional subtypes, such as signed and form-data, have since been separately defined in other RFCs.

The following is a list of the most commonly used subtypes; it is not intended to be a comprehensive list.

Mixed

Multipart/mixed is used for sending files with different "Content-Type" headers inline (or as attachments). If sending pictures or other easily readable files, most mail clients will display them inline (unless otherwise specified with the "Content-disposition" header). Otherwise it will offer them as attachments. The default content-type for each part is "text/plain".

Defined in RFC 2046, Section 5.1.3

Message

A message/rfc822 part contains an e-mail message, including any headers. Rfc822 is a misnomer, since the message may be a full MIME message. This is used for digests as well as for E-mail forwarding.

Defined in RFC 2046.

Digest

Multipart/digest is a simple way to send multiple text messages. The default content-type for each part is "message/rfc822".

Defined in RFC 2046, Section 5.1.5

Alternative

The multipart/alternative subtype indicates that each part is an "alternative" version of the same (or similar) content, each in a different format denoted by its "Content-Type" header. The formats are ordered by how faithful they are to the original, with the least faithful first and the most faithful last. Systems can then choose the "best" representation they are capable of processing; in general, this will be the last part that the system can understand, although other factors may affect this.

Since a client is unlikely to want to send a version that is less faithful than the plain text version, this structure places the plain text version (if present) first. This makes life easier for users of clients that do not understand multipart messages.

Most commonly, multipart/alternative is used for e-mail with two parts, one plain text (text/plain) and one HTML (text/html). The plain text part provides backwards compatibility while the HTML part allows use of formatting and hyperlinks. Most e-mail clients offer a user option to prefer plain text over HTML; this is an example of how local factors may affect how an application chooses which "best" part of the message to display.

While it is intended that each part of the message represent the same content, the standard does not require this to be enforced in any way. At one time, anti-spam filters would only examine the text/plain part of a message, because it is easier to parse than the text/html part. But spammers eventually took advantage of this, creating messages with an innocuous-looking text/plain part and advertising in the text/html part. Anti-spam software eventually caught up on this trick, penalizing messages with very different text in a multipart/alternative message.

Defined in RFC 2046, Section 5.1.4

Related

A multipart/related is used to indicate that message parts should not be considered individually but rather as parts of an aggregate whole. The message consists of a root part (by default, the first) which reference other parts inline, which may in turn reference other parts. Message parts are commonly referenced by the "Content-ID" part header. The syntax of a reference is unspecified and is instead dictated by the encoding or protocol used in the part.

One common usage of this subtype is to send a web page complete with images in a single message. The root part would contain the HTML document, and use image tags to reference images stored in the latter parts.

Defined in RFC 2387

Report

Multipart/report is a message type that contains data formatted for a mail server to read. It is split between a text/plain (or some other content/type easily readable) and a message/delivery-status, which contains the data formatted for the mail server to read.

Defined in RFC 3462

Signed

A multipart/signed message is used to attach a digital signature to a message. It has two parts, a body part and a signature part. The whole of the body part, including mime headers, is used to create the signature part. Many signature types are possible, like application/pgp-signature (RFC 3156) and application/x-pkcs7-signature (S/MIME).

Defined in RFC 1847, Section 2.1

Encrypted

A multipart/encrypted message has two parts. The first part has control information that is needed to decrypt the application/octet-stream second part. Similar to signed messages, there are different implementations which are identified by their separate content types for the control part. The most common types are "application/pgp-encrypted" (RFC 3156) and "application/pkcs7-mime" (S/MIME).

Defined in RFC 1847, Section 2.2

Form Data

As its name implies, multipart/form-data is used to express values submitted through a form. Originally defined as part of HTML 4.0, it is most commonly used for submitting files via HTTP.

Defined in RFC 2388

Mixed-Replace (experimental)

The content type multipart/x-mixed-replace was developed as part of a technology to emulate server push and streaming over HTTP.

All parts of a mixed-replace message have the same semantic meaning. However, each part invalidates - "replaces" - the previous parts as soon as it is received completely. Clients should process the individual parts as soon as they arrive and should not wait for the whole message to finish.

Originally developed by Netscape, it is still supported by Mozilla, Firefox, Chrome, Safari (but not in Safari on the iPhone) and Opera, but traditionally ignored by Microsoft. It is commonly used in IP cameras as the MIME type for MJPEG streams.

Byteranges

The multipart/byteranges is used to represent noncontiguous byte ranges of a single message. It is used by HTTP when a server returns multiple byte ranges and is defined in RFC 2616.

See also

8BITMIME

Binary-to-text encoding

Direct Internet Message Encapsulation (DIME)– a now superseded Microsoft-proposed protocol intended as a streamlined MIME, primarily for use in web services.

Extended SMTP (ESMTP)

Internet media type

Mailcap

mime.types

Object Linking and Embedding (OLE)

S/MIME

SOAP with Attachments

Unicode and e-mail

References

;Notes ; RFC 1426 : SMTP Service Extension for 8bit-MIMEtransport. J. Klensin, N. Freed, M. Rose, E. Stefferud, D. Crocker. February 1993. ; RFC 1847 : Security Multiparts for MIME: Multipart/Signed and Multipart/Encrypted ; RFC 3156 : MIME Security with OpenPGP ; RFC 2045 : MIME Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies. ; RFC 2046 : MIME Part Two: Media Types. N. Freed, Nathaniel Borenstein. November 1996. ; RFC 2047 : MIME Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text. Keith Moore. November 1996. ; RFC 4288 : MIME Part Four: Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures. ; RFC 4289 : MIME Part Four: Registration Procedures. N. Freed, J. Klensin. December 2005. ; RFC 2049 : MIME Part Five: Conformance Criteria and Examples. N. Freed, N. Borenstein. November 1996. ; RFC 2183 : Communicating Presentation Information in Internet Messages: The Content-Disposition Header. Troost, R., Dorner, S. and K. Moore. August 1997. ; RFC 2231 : MIME Parameter Value and Encoded Word Extensions: Character Sets, Languages, and Continuations. N. Freed, K. Moore. November 1997. ; RFC 2387 : The MIME Multipart/Related Content-type ; RFC 1521 : Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies

Further reading

External links

A more detailed overview of MIME (1993)

MIME Media Types - comprising a list of directories of content types and subtypes, maintained by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

List of Character Sets

Properly Configuring Server MIME Types

W3 School's Multimedia MIME Reference

An easy to follow description of multipart messages from MH & nmh

Category:Email Category:Internet standards Category:Application layer protocols Category:Presentation layer protocols Category:HTTP

Name	Natalie Imbruglia
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Natalie Jane Imbruglia
Born	February 04, 1975
Origin	Central Coast, New South Wales, Australia
Instruments	Singing
Genre	Pop, Alternative rock
Years active	1991–present (actress) 1997–present (singer)
Label	RCA / BMG (1997–2004)Brightside / Sony BMG (2004–2008) Malabar / Island (2009–2010)
Notable albums	Left Of The Middle
Notable songs	Torn, Wrong Impression, Shiver
Url

Natalie Jane Imbruglia () (born February 4, 1975) is an Australian singer-songwriter, model and actress.

In the early 1990s, Imbruglia was known to audiences as Beth Brennan in the popular Australian soap Neighbours. Three years after leaving the programme, Imbruglia launched a singing career with the international hit, "Torn". The subsequent debut album Left of the Middle (1997) sold over 6 million copies worldwide. While following releases, White Lilies Island (2001) and Counting Down the Days (2005), have been unable to match the commercial success of her debut, the latter became her first UK #1.

Her fourth studio album, Come to Life, was released on October 2, 2009 to little effect. The physical UK release has been delayed so that Imbruglia can commit to her duties as mentor and judge on the Australian version of The X Factor'' franchise.

She co-starred in the 2003 film Johnny English and made her leading actress debut in the 2009 film Closed for Winter.

Biography

First of the four daughters to a Sicilian (Lipari), father and an Anglo-Celtic Australian mother, Imbruglia grew up on the Central Coast, north of Sydney, south of Newcastle. Imbruglia studied ballet, tap, and highland dancing as a child, hoping to make a career out of it.

Early career

Imbruglia auditioned for Australian TV commercials and appeared in spots for Coke and the popular Australian snack Twisties. By age 16, she left high school to start a career in acting. She soon obtained the chance to play a regular role on the Australian soap opera Neighbours at the age of 16½.

By the end of her second year, she left the show to move to London, immersing herself in the city's club scene. Her effort paid off and she was signed to BMG Publishing, after coming up with a demo of the song "Torn" which greatly impressed RCA Records.

Music

She has received an MTV Award for Best New Artist in 1998, and 3 constitutive Grammy Award nominations in 1999. She has sold over 9 million albums worldwide. She was ranked #11 on Rock on the Net's list of single artists of the year in 1998, and #76 in 2001. Imbruglia has tied up her 4-album record deal with BMG after the delivery of her compilation album, .

"Torn" and Left of the Middle (1997–2000)

Imbruglia's first internationally released single, "Torn" (1997), was a cover of an Ednaswap song. Instantly the single became one of the biggest hits of the 90s, reaching number two in the UK Singles Chart in November 1997 and number one on airplay around the world and was number one on the Billboard Airplay chart for 14 weeks. The single went on to sell over a million copies in the United Kingdom alone.

It was also released as a radio single in the U.S., but not in buyable CD-format. The single quickly hit #1 on the Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart, where it stayed for 14 weeks. At the time, singles not released commercially were unable to chart to the overall Hot 100 chart (combined sales and airplay), so "Torn" made no appearance on it for a while. By the time the policy was changed in late 1998 to allow airplay-only songs, "Torn" was already heading down the charts, so its peak on the Hot 100 only ended up being at #42. The single also topped the Top 40 Mainstream/CHR Pop and Adult Top 40 charts.

In October 1997, it broke the all-time airplay record in the U.K. for being the most played (more than 2000 plays) for six consecutive weeks. It was finally No. 1 for 14 weeks in the U.K. radio chart, a record that is being tied by only Simply Red's Fairground. It was the No. 1 radio single in the U.S. from March to July 1998. It was knocked down to No. 2 by The Goo Goo Dolls' Iris.

Rick Dees, in his Top 40 Chart show also declared "Torn" as the 'number one radio single of 1990s' in their 2000 Millennium Countdown show, broadcast from KIIS-FM on New Year's Eve.

Imbruglia made a surprise appearance alongside David Armand midway through a performance of his supposed 'interpretative dance' routine to sing her hit song Torn at Amnesty International's The Secret Policeman's Ball (2006).

Imbruglia's debut album Left of the Middle was released on 8 December 1997. It sold 350,000 copies in the UK 3 weeks after its initial release and was certified platinum. It has sold over 6 million copies to date. It broke the record of the highest selling debut album by a pop/rock/alternative female artist, more than Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, and Meredith Brooks combined in its first week according to Billboard. The second single released in the UK, after "Torn" was "Big Mistake", which debuted at number-two. "Wishing I Was There" followed and it was less successful than her first two singles, reaching number 19. However, "Wishing I Was There" was a smash hit on the UK radio, peaked at No. 2 in summer 1998, and was a summer smash hit in the USA radio, peaked at No. 14 on the Top 40 Show. The final single from Left of the Middle was "Smoke", and the reception was much more divided compared to the other singles. It was a hit in the UK and made the top 5, while in Australia it just missed the top 40. Eventually, the album became a million-seller after charting well in many countries and entering the Top 10 in the US and UK. In 1999, she recorded a cover of the song Never Tear Us Apart by INXS with Tom Jones which appeared on his album Reload.

Left of the Middle was certified platinum by RIAA within 4 weeks of release (3 April 1998) and was certified 2X platinum in November 1998.

White Lilies Island (2001–2004)

Imbruglia's next album, White Lilies Island, arrived in 2001. It is named after the island where her English and main home is situated on the banks of the River Thames at Windsor. The writing process, in which Imbruglia co-wrote every track, took almost three years to complete The album's first single, "That Day", was very different stylistically from her previous singles, but it did not reach the UK Top 10. In the USA, "Wrong Impression" was released as the first single and it enjoyed small success, charting in the Hot 100 Singles chart and the Adult Contemporary chart. The track was also released in the UK as a second single, and it did slightly better than That Day. "Beauty On The Fire", the final single, experienced minimal success and barely entered charts worldwide, and didn't make the top 50 in Australia. The album still managed to sell over 1 million copies but failed to repeat the widespread success of Left of the Middle.

, Italy, in 2005]] Imbruglia's third album was ready in November 2003. Imbruglia's record label refused to release it due to it being too rock and not radio-friendly. She was later given songs to record with Swedish pop producers, Bloodshy & Avant, which she refused to do. Imbruglia and her record label parted ways at the beginning of 2004. Four months later she signed with a new label Brightside Recordings, which was formed by a former Innocent Records executive, Hugh Goldsmith.

Counting Down the Days (2005–2008)

Imbruglia started working on an album again. In April 2005, Imbruglia released her third studio album Counting Down the Days in the UK with "Shiver" as its first single. "Shiver" was a huge success, and it became her longest running single in the UK since "Torn." It topped UK airplay charts for several weeks, reaching eighth place in the UK charts. It also became the most played song of 2005. The song's acclaim and reception paid off and Counting Down The Days became her first album to reach the top spot on the album charts.

It was decided that 'Sanctuary' would be second single from the album. The promo singles were sent to radio stations. The decision was later changed to the title track "Counting Down the Days", with radio stations being asked to play the album version, because the radio mix was not finished. The single was released on July 25 but it did not have as much success in the singles chart as "Shiver." Though it managed to reignite interest in its parent album, and also received a lot of airplay in the UK. Due to the single, the album managed to re-enter the top 40 in the official UK charts.

Imbruglia had a choice to either release 'Perfectly' as her third single, or use the GBP200,000 funding from BMG to do a tour. She decided to do a small European tour (as she had not done a proper tour since Left of the Middle) in late October and November to promote the album. Though the album never entered UK Top 40 again, she proved once again that she had maintained a dedicated fan base; several concerts, especially those in London, sold out.

The album is the 100th best-selling album in 2005, selling 204,877 copies in the UK alone.

Imbruglia started working on her fourth album in late 2005. In mid 2007 the plans changed and Imbruglia's record company decided to release the single collection instead. The compilation is a celebration of Imbruglia's 10 years in the music industry. The only single lifted from the album - "Glorious" premiered in BBC Radio 1 on the Chris Moyles Show. The promotion included a special acoustic gig. It can be found on iTunes. The Singles Collection debuted at #5 in the UK Music charts, and boasted 5 new songs, including the single "Glorious", as well as a bonus DVD featuring all Imbruglia's Music Videos. The album has sold around 600,000 copies worldwide to date.

Come to Life (2009–present)

, Romania, in 2008]] She parted ways with her record label. She is no longer associated with Brightside Recordings. It has been confirmed that Imbruglia obtained the rights to the songs recorded for the album and is going to release her fourth studio album on her own independent label, Malabar Records. She confirmed that the songs included on the record were co-written with Ben Hillier, Dave McCracken, Daniel Johns, Gary Clark, Jamie Hartman, Paul Harris and Shep Solomon. Some of the tracks were produced by Hillier and mixed by Danton Supple, who previously collaborated with the singer on her album White Lilies Island. The album was scheduled to be released in March 2009 with the first single being sent to radio stations in February. It has now been confirmed by Imbruglia that the first single will be sent to radio around July, as she had a “last-minute inspiration" and also had some new material offered from Chris Martin . In an interview with BBC Radio 1 she said that "there is some electronic stuff in there". The album is confirmed to be titled Come to Life.

According to The Sun, Imbruglia and Chris Martin of Coldplay collaborated on "a string of tracks, which are likely to feature on her forthcoming album". Martin later confirmed the information. In an interview he said he had asked Imbruglia to record one of the band's songs which, he thinks, turned out great adding "we've given her the best Coldplay song of all time [. . .] she sounds [. . .] brilliant on it. I think she has a very unique talent and an incredibly unique voice." She later stressed that she recorded two songs written by him saying "if Chris Martin calls with two songs, you don't think, you say, 'Yes'." It was confirmed that the songs were mixed by Michael Brauer. He also informed that there are actually three songs written by Chris, which were recorded by Imbruglia and that the album is finished and awaits mastering.

Two songs — "My God" and "Apologise" — leaked to the Internet in early February. It was confirmed that the latter was co-written with Jamie Hartman of Ben's Brother and will not be included on her fourth album. A version of "Apologise" performed by Ben's Brother was released instead in 2009 as the first single from their second album, Battling Giants.

Tracks confirmed to be part of the album include "Fun", "Lukas", and "Want", which were mixed by Michael Brauer. The music video for a pre-single track, "Wild About It", was filmed in London on July 25, 2009.

In July 2009, it was announced that the album will be released via Island Records outside of Australia and New Zealand. A record deal for distribution in Australia and New Zealand is expected to be announced soon. Universal Music is set to release the album locally in Australia on October 9, 2009, and New Zealand on October 5, 2009.

According to Imbruglia's website, the first official single taken from Come to Life is "Want", which was written by Imbruglia, Daniel Johns (credited Kat Kourtney), Gary Clark, and Chris Martin. The single was released on September 28, 2009, to critical acclaim, but poor worldwide chart performances.

On August 3, 2009 the music video of "Wild About It" was released.

Come to Life was released on October 12, 2009 in Europe, and in the UK on 3 May 2010, with a new lead single "Scars". The video for "Scars" was filmed on 26 February 2010 according to her Twitter. "Scars" was sent to radio in the UK on 22 March 2010; however, due to no support from radio networks, the single release was cancelled. There was further news that the single would be released with a 5 July date, however the video and single cannot be found on the internet anywhere. The release of her album was also cancelled in the UK.

The X Factor

UK

In 2010, Imbruglia stood in for friend Dannii Minogue as a judge at the Birmingham auditions of the seventh series of the british series of X Factor, it was reported that the audience booed her and chanted 'Who are ya!' and 'One hit wonder' at her, later two teenage girls named Ablisa asked her 'Who are you?' when she told them their singing was not great. Minogue also later chose Imbruglia to assist her in choosing her final three acts in the "judges' houses" round.

Australia

In May 2010, after Dannii Minogue, who is a judge on the British version of The X Factor declined to judge the Australian show Imbruglia became one of the new judges instead. The series began airing on Channel Seven in the second half of 2010. The auditions took place in June 2010. Imbruglia mentors the Girls category and her final three contestants that she chose for the top twelve live stages were Hayley Teal, Sally Chatfield and India-Rose Madderom. Chatfield came second to Altyian Childs. Imbruglia has since been nominated for a TV Week Silver Logie for Most Popular TV Presenter.

Personal life

On New Year's Eve 2003, Imbruglia and her boyfriend of three and a half years, Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns, were married in a beach ceremony in Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia. While Imbruglia lived mainly in Windsor, Berkshire, UK, on an island named "White Lilies" (also the name of her second album), Johns lived in Newcastle, Australia. On January 4, 2008, Imbruglia and Johns released a statement announcing their divorce, citing distance as the main reason. However, the two remain friends.

Imbruglia is the elder sister of singer-songwriter Laura Imbruglia.

Personal causes

Imbruglia is an ambassador for Virgin Unite and supports campaigns to end poverty and to bring attention to the disease known as obstetric fistula.

She appeared in a sketch at the Secret Policeman's Ball for Amnesty International on October 31, 2006.

She has also spoken publicly of suffering from clinical depression to raise awareness about the disorder.

2008 saw her support the Fashion Targets Breast Cancer campaign in support of Breakthrough Breast Cancer, alongside fellow celebrities: comedian Alan Carr, DJ & presenter Edith Bowman, actress Anna Friel and supermodel Twiggy.

Looks and fashion

Imbruglia was named 6th most naturally beautiful woman of all time in 2004. Audrey Hepburn topped the poll in which only experts like fashion editors, model agents and make-up artists could vote. The voting was decided on the "most naturally beautiful woman, inside and out". She was ranked 90th on the VH1 100 Sexiest Artists.

She has been seen sporting tattoos of Sanskrit/Hindi inscription "Shreya" on her neck, Chinese word for courage on her left foot and Sanskrit Aum on her lower back, and has her left nipple pierced.

Imbruglia stated that she has never had any plastic surgery but added "I wouldn't rule it out because I don't know how I'll feel in the future." She also stated she'd like to "grow old gracefully, wrinkles and all".

Besides modelling for L'Oréal, Imbruglia also modelled Sass and Bide's "The Mad Ones" dress to raise money for cancer.

Discography

Left of the Middle (1997)

White Lilies Island (2001)

Counting Down the Days (2005)

Come to Life (2009)

Film career

Television

Endorsements

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Natalie Imbruglia Online

Article in the Indian press about Natalie Imbruglia's involvement in the Campaign to End Fistula

Natalie Imbruglia discusses the global importance of the water cycle with Ecover Wateraid

ELLE TV: A Trouser Suit Story

Category:1975 births Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Living people Category:Australian people of Italian descent Category:Sicilian Australians Category:Australian television actors Category:Australian pop singers Category:English-language singers Category:Australian female singers Category:Australian singers of Italian descent Category:Australian singer-songwriters Category:ARIA Award winners Category:Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:RCA Records artists Category:Island Records artists Category:The X Factor judges Category:The X Factor (UK)

Name	Michael Courtemanche
Birth date	December 11, 1964
Birth place	Laval, Quebec, Canada
Occupation	Actor, comedian

Michel Courtemanche (born December 11, 1964 in Laval, Quebec, Canada) is a Québécois comedian and actor. He has drawn hundreds of thousands to his one-man shows in Quebec, France, Belgium and Switzerland.

His debut one-man show, A New Comic is Born, ran for more than five hundred performances and earned him two Felix nominations. It was first performed in Montreal in 1989. His second, The New Adventures of Michel Courtemanche, first performed in 1992, filled theatres in both North America and Europe and spawned his second international hit video (1993).

Courtemanche has internationally sold out enormous houses usually reserved for rock stars (although such shows are quite commonplace for comedians in Quebec). He has even inspired a popular one-of-a-kind hardcover comic book. He has starred in Québécois films La Nuit de Noces and Karmina 2, and on the Secret Adventures of Jules Verne television series, on the Sci Fi Channel (United States).

His style of comedy can be best summed up as mime combined with sound effects, as he is most often seen interacting with invisible objects or even people and using his voice to complete the scene. He is also particularly good at making remarkable grimaces.

Since 2002, he moved behind the camera; his production company, Encore Télévision, produces the French-Canadian edition of a sitcom called Caméra café, which was adapted from French television.

See also

List of Quebec comedians

Humour of Quebec

Culture of Quebec

External links

YouTube - Michel Courtemanche: Golfer

Category:Canadian comedians Category:Quebec comedians Category:People from Laval, Quebec Category:1964 births Category:Living people

Name	David Armand
Birth date	September 1977(aged 33)
Birth place	England
Medium	television, theatre, radio
Nationality	English
Genre	Comedy

David Armand (born David Whitehead) is an English comedian, actor and writer. He was educated at St Catharine's College, Cambridge and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He has performed for television, stage, film and radio.

As a member of the sketch comedy troupe The Hollow Men, he appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe four times between 1999 and 2002, and then went on to appear at the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado in 2003, and the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal in 2005. The group wrote and starred in their self-titled TV series for Comedy Central in the US, and two series for BBC Radio 4.

He is well-known for his mime style interpretive dance of Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" (in character as "Johann Lippowitz" - an Austrian "interpretive dance artist"). In 2005 one of his performances was presented on HBO Comedy and subsequently spread through the internet. The performance is often labeled as 'Karaoke for the Deaf,' or 'Karaoke for the Hearing Impaired.'

He performed his famous dance on stage live with Natalie Imbruglia at the 2006 Secret Policeman's Ball for Amnesty International. The performance started with Armand dancing with Imbruglia singing live vocals backstage, then on-stage, and concluded with Imbruglia performing Armand's dance moves alongside him.

As Johann Lippowitz, Armand has performed several other songs, including "Wherever I Lay My Hat" by Paul Young and "Don't Look Back in Anger" by Oasis .

As an actor, his TV appearances include Pulling, The Armstrong and Miller Show, Swinging, Peep Show and the CBBC sketch show Sorry, I've Got No Head, for which he also writes.

Armand has recently starred in BBC Three sitcom, How Not To Live Your Life as Eddie Singh, the widowed grandmother's carer. He has also appeared in several online BBC comedy sketches with a group called This is Wondervision.

David recently appeared on Fast and Loose on BBC2 doing an interpretive dance to George Michael's song Careless Whisper.

References

External links

Category:Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge Category:English comedians Category:English actors Category:English comedy writers Category:English television actors Category:Living people Category:1977 births