Ladyhawke's breakdown after debut album

Ladyhawke. Photo / Richard Robinson

Kiwi rock sensation Ladyhawke has revealed she suffered a physical breakdown that prevented her recording a follow-up album to her hit debut.

After a four year-wait, the first single off her new album is due for release next week and the album, Anxiety, is due out next month.

The album, recorded in New Zealand and France, was to have been out in October last year.

Her breakdown followed that of New Zealand soprano Hayley Westenra, who has said the pressure of her work nearly led her to self-destruct.

Ladyhawke, whose real name is Pip Brown, told NME magazine that sheer exhaustion stopped her recording soon after the first album.

When she first went into record she says she was physically unable to deliver.

"I had no idea how exhausted I'd be after I finished touring. I was physically incapable of doing anything. I tried to start recording about a month after I finished on tour and I turned up at the studio and just fell asleep. I was like a zombie."

Brown says the name of the album was telling: "Every song has that sort of feeling, my mindset throughout the recording was a mixture of being so tired and just being worried the whole time. I'm a walking ball of anxiety. It completely sums up the album."

Westenra revealed last year that she had developed an eating disorder and feared she would never perform again.

She told London newspaper the Daily Telegraph she had contracted bronchitis in 2008 and, after trying to sing through it, decided she had to cancel the remaining dates of her tour.

The pressure of living in the public eye and keeping to an intense performance schedule led to a breakdown in early 2009, she said.

Westenra returned to New Zealand for Christmas that year and was hit by an "enormous wave of exhaustion".

"I got really depressed. I convinced myself that I could never go back."

Westenra, like Brown, rekindled her passion for performances and was back on track by August last year.