INTERVIEW: Cascada on her first ever headline tour of Australia: "I still love performing 'Everytime We Touch'...I just really appreciate the love that you feel and get when it comes to this song."
Interview: Shalane Connors
Published: 27 August 2026
If you went anywhere near a dancefloor in the early 2000s, chances are you will have a special place in your heart for German synth-electro-eurodance act Cascada. Originally a trio, Cascada is now a solo project for lead singer Natalie Horler.
First releasing music in 2004 with the single ‘Miracle’, a top 10 UK smash, Cascada have had multiple global hits over the past two decades, with second single ‘Everytime We Touch’ becoming a massive breakthrough for Horler, peaking at number 2 in the UK and hitting the top 10 in the USA.
One of the most iconic moments in early 2000s eurodance arrived in 2009 when Cascada released the single ‘Evacuate The Dancefloor’. Peaking at number 3, it became the band’s biggest hit in Australia, whilst also hitting number 1 in the UK and the top 40 in the US. In 2013, Cascada represented Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Glorious’, and to date Cascada have sold over 30 million records.
This November, Horler will return to Australia for the first ever solo Cascada headline tour. Starting on 27 November on the Sunshine Coast, Horler will then perform in the Gold Coast, Brisbane, Perth and Sydney before closing the tour in Melbourne on 6 December. Supported by Darren Bailie of Guru Josh Project and Nick Skitz, the shows promise to be both a nostalgic rush of early 2000s eurodance as well as a celebration on the dancefloor. We recently caught up with Horler to chat more about the upcoming shows.
Hey Natalie! You are about to come to Australia for the first time as a solo headliner 20 years since ‘Everytime We Touch’ came out.
We did our first Australia tour in 2018 I think it was, and we were there for one festival show, and we were in Sydney last year, so it's not the first time we're coming to Australia, but it’s certainly the first time we’re doing our own headline tour.
‘Everytime We Touch’ is an absolute banger, it obviously changed your life. Tell me about the before and after of that track, and specifically the impact it had on you.
As you rightly put it, it made my career. It changed my life. The funny thing is, it happened very early on in my career. Some people maybe plug away for 10 years and then they land the big hit and then it changes everything. That wasn't the case for me. I was literally very green, I was very young. I had just started with studio work, and I met my producers and we started the project Cascada. ‘Everytime We Touch’ was the second or third track that we recorded, and it went through the roof within that year. I started touring the States and everywhere else as well as literally a very early on artist who hadn't had any experience. It was a bit of a mad time, and it did change my life. It just kickstarted everything, really, and I grew into this life quite early on. It’s been a big experience and progress ever since really.
Were you just pinching yourself the whole time? Like, is this real? Is this really happening to me?
Yeah, pretty much! But I tell you what, I think I would react differently to it now than I did back then because back then you're just caught up in this whirlwind. You don't really even think about it. You don't really analyse it. We were travelling to New York for the first time ever, getting a yellow cab, and it's on the radio. Or you go and do these big festivals where Backstreet Boys, Lady Gaga, will.i.am are performing before you and after you and you've only just sort of stepped onto the scene. I just went along on the ride, really, without really actually understanding what's going on and how massive this actually is. That came with the years afterwards, and two years later we had a hit with ‘Evacuate The Dancefloor’ which was great, and it just went from there.
‘Everytime We Touch’ is an absolute earworm, it's been stuck in my head knowing that I was going to talk to you. I can't imagine what it's like performing that track for 20 years. Your audience obviously love it, it was a mega hit and there's a huge level of nostalgia involved with that song and that era. How do you keep performing that song fresh over the years?
Funnily enough, I still love performing it. We've adapted our show over the years, we need to make production a little bit more modern. But the old tracks that people know, like ‘Everytime We Touch’, we don't really touch it. We'll change up the ending or make a remix, but at the end of the day, it's the track that everyone loves, and I still enjoy it. I always do a little acapella with everyone because I know people love to sing along to it. I know there are artists out there that get sick of their big hits at some stage, and maybe that'll happen in a further 20 years. But for now, I just really appreciate the love that you feel and get when it comes to this song. I still love performing it, it's still loads of fun, and I'm just really, really grateful. I can't wait to come to Australia and perform it.
When you started off with Cascada, you were the front woman, the face, and vocal interpreter, you weren't so much involved in the songwriting side of things. Talk to me about your evolution into songwriting - your latest track, ‘YOUtopia’, is a banger, I love it. What has it been like taking the reins with songwriting?
When I started out, I was just this very young studio singer, and I got involved with producers who were doing dance music. They had vocals on, sometimes anonymous vocals, their dance tracks and that's how I got into the whole genre really.I just wasn't involved in the songwriting aspect, I went straight on tour, and that's all I was doing for years and years.
I've always been interested in writing and I've always dabbled on my own, but it was never involved with what I was doing with Cascada. And then the pandemic hit, and I was stuck at home for the first time in years, and didn't have anything to do. I couldn't go on tour, and that's when I started. [Producer] Jax Jones had written to me in 2019 and I went over to London to go in a session with him, and nothing came of it, but we ended up doing lots of Zoom writing sessions in COVID times, and it started from then really. When COVID was over I started doing sessions with people in London, Berlin, and started really getting into writing. That's sort of how it developed, and that's how ‘YOUtopia’ came about too. I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy writing so much, and it just makes everything far more personal. Everyone seems to be enjoying it, and there's going to be more music coming as well, very very soon.
What was the draw for you towards the Eurodance flavour? Is that just a product of having grown up in Germany, where it’s quite popular?
I didn't listen to that music back then, that was not my type of music at all. I've got a jazz dad, he's a trombone player and arranger and pianist, and that's what I grew up with. Because I was learning to sing as a child, I was looking at people like Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, and later on people like Alicia Keys. I was full on into soul music because I was learning how to sing and what sort of vocalist I wanted to be. So when I met my producers, that's how I got into that genre of music. I've always loved dance music, but that type of music wasn't really what I was listening to, or what I had much experience in. But I jumped straight in. It suited my voice, and obviously I'm a very energetic person anyway, so it matched my energy for the stage. It caught hold of me, and it's never let go. And I really love it. It's a good match. It happened by chance, really, because I don't know whether it would have gone in that direction had I been the person deciding on it!
Yeah, that's a wonderful happenstance to be matched up with people that just led you in this entire different direction to what you possibly imagined. What did you imagine for yourself?
I guess it was destiny! I always wanted to be a singer, since I was a child, I was watching Sister Act and yearning to be Lauryn Hill. At school, which was naughty, I was sitting in class and writing out what I wanted my music video to look like. I already knew what I wanted to do in life, but I didn't know what it was going to be. The people you're listening to, you think you're going to be singing those sort of songs, you don't really know what direction it's going to go. But it turned out the way it turned out, and I was very very lucky because I was quite cheeky at school. I used to say to my teachers, ‘I don't need any of this, I’m going to be famous.’ I was so bloody cocky, and it doesn't always work out. Even my dad, who's a musician, said to me, ‘Have a plan B, young lady. You won't necessarily be successful as I am because you have to be lucky.’ And I was!
I've also heard the advice the other way, to not have a plan B. Put all your eggs in one basket.
I actually didn't really have a plan B, but my dad told me I should have. I'm pretty sure it was clever advice, but none that I took!
You've obviously got a very dedicated audience over your 20 plus year career. Has your demographic changed over time? Do you find it’s still the people from your first era have followed you all the way, or do you bring in younger audiences as you go?
The latter. I think we've broadened our audience, which is amazing. This is obviously thanks to Spotify. We literally haven't stopped touring in 20 years, I never really took a break. The longest break was COVID, which was a year and a quarter. We seem to take people along who grew up with us, which is amazing, but at the same time, we do play loads of current festivals with young people in the audience who know our music too. They don't just know the new stuff that we've been releasing the past couple of years, they also know the old stuff, so that is obviously due to streaming. We’re thankful for that because they have access to it. I always say, back in the day, say 50 years ago, to be able to hear older music that was released, you literally had to dig up some LP of your parents in the attic. You don't need to do that anymore. The kids can go on Spotify. They may have heard ‘YOUtopia’ for the first time, didn't really know who I was, and then they see a list of all sorts of tracks, and click on them as well. It's very very accessible, and it makes things very easy for us. So it's great. We seem to have quite a broad audience nowadays.
It's quite interesting talking to someone who's had such such longevity with their career, how have you found the transition into having to so heavily rely on social media and TikTok and Instagram and all of that to find new audiences? Is that not really a pressure for you because you already had a a base before that?
I personally don't feel that pressure. When social media became more and more important, I didn't jump on the bandwagon straight away, it was very gradual. If I'd had been a new artist coming into a label, signing a new deal early on, and they say, ‘Bam, this is what you got to do: TikTok videos and Instagram every day’ I probably would have felt overwhelmed with that.
I was gradual with it to be honest, and it's only been the past three or four singles that we've actually planned content days where you actually make videos. It's the new advertising to get your stuff across. Back in the day, it was all about making the next music video for the new single. When are we going to shoot the video? That's just not the same. It just doesn't take priority anymore, but social media does. It's cool, it's fun, I don't feel the pressure of having to do stuff, I do it anyway. In my stories I take my fans on the journey everywhere. But if I have a couple of days at home where I'm not really doing much, you won't see too much private stuff going on. I don't take people along to a cafe or to meet a friend. It's mostly about the music, and I think people enjoy that because that's why they follow me.
As someone who has spent a ridiculous amount of time on the road touring, how do you keep yourself grounded? Do you have any rituals you take with you so that you have a constant living in that constantly changing environment?
I don't think you have to take anything with you on tour to stay grounded. It's the people around you that keep you grounded. I still see my best friends, iI've known them 20 plus years, a lot of them have known me before I even became a popular artist and did all this. So I think that's what keeps you going. Your family, your friends, the people you surround yourself with. The people I'm on tour with, we have a very normal relationship, even though we share this crazy life. That's what it's about. I don't go through life thinking about being famous or being a singer every day, or you know, put on the sunglasses in a in a dark room. I just find that really silly. I'm a completely normal person. When I'm home, I do everyday things. The only thing that's different to most people is that I work when everyone else is off! Every weekend, holiday times, that's my busiest time!
Do you ever suffer from burnout, or do you think having a team such as you do has prevented that for you?
I haven't felt burnout yet. I don't really believe in that word, to be honest. If you do too much, you're going to feel it, and your body will let you know. I do have my family that sometimes say, ‘Nat, you're doing a bit too much’. I've done about 125 flights this year already, it's a lot, and I get it. I don't have a lot of free time. But you have to self-regulate a little bit. I'm not great at it, my work-life balance isn't where it should be, but I'm working at it. I have people around me who do say to me, ‘Nat, next year you need to take a little bit more time off than this year’. But I'm also an adult, and I'm going to make the decisions I want to make and it's not always the most sensible! I'm a little bit of a workaholic. What can I say? But I also love what I do, and there will come a time one day where I'll probably want to do less, but I'm just not at that point yet. So if there's going to be some warning signal that I need to take a break, then I'm sure we'll just find that break and I'll take a couple of weeks off. But at the moment, I feel great.
Beautiful. You're coming to Australia November & December for your tour. You've be visiting Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, and Melbourne. What can we expect from this tour, and what are you most looking forward to?
Well, this is going to sound so silly, but I'm loving the fact that it's your summer because we're going to be coming out of winter and spending two weeks in Australia! I'm so excited because to be able to tour places that you don't get to tour very often, we obviously are in Europe mostly, it's so exciting. I've heard that the reactions to the tour are just amazing. Everyone's so excited that we're coming. I think a lot of the shows are already sold out, so I couldn't be happier. Australia is quite abstract for Europeans, it feels like a bit of a paradise far away. So to be able to go there and do what I love, but still have a little bit of time to see the country as well, I'm just really excited.
Australian Tour 2026 Dates
27 November - The Shed, Palmview Sunshine Coast
28 November - Burleigh Town Hotel, Gold Coast
29 November - Mansfield Arena, Brisbane
4 December - The Court, Perth
5 December - The Greenwood Hotel, Sydney
6 December - 170 Russell, Melbourne
Follow Cascada on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and their website.
