Natasha Bedingfield was on stage supporting Lewis Capaldi at The O2 in 2022 when she noticed something strange was happening.
“Everyone was singing together,” he marvels. “They knew every word to every song. Then my manager came running to me and said ‘they are all young people!’ said. I guess these songs were sneaking their way into popular culture and then when Unwritten got into the movie [Anyone But You]It exploded because everyone left the movie theater singing along to TikTok. This is madness.”
Although it was accidental, the timing couldn’t have been better. This year marks two decades since British-born Bedingfield first released her hip pop anthem Unwritten, and the 42-year-old singer-songwriter had already planned to celebrate by playing festivals, including this week’s Cambridge Club Festival, headlined by Chaka Khan. Just as Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s career was rebooted when 2001’s Murder on the Dancefloor was cast in the film Saltburn last year, Bedingfield has once again been given top billing.
“I’ve been working all this time but I haven’t done much in England. This year I wanted to return to my roots. Then the song exploded again!”
Unwritten changed the direction of Bedingfield’s life once again. Although it reached a very respectable Number Six in the UK upon its release in 2004, it became even more popular in the US, where it remained on the chart for over nine months, receiving a Grammy Award nomination and being used as the theme song for MTV. reality show called The Hills. “The show wasn’t really my thing and I didn’t watch it,” he admits, “but I understand why everyone was so invested in it because it was all about people trying to figure out who they are.”
The song became the most played track on US radio in 2006 and made Bedingfield a household name there. She has sung at the UN, released a charity single with Beyonce, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus and Mariah Carey, appeared on a Nicki Minaj album, and written and recorded a song about climate change with Paul McCartney.
“I went to the White House and met with President Obama and told him you used my song in your campaign!” He remembers. “And it was like, I know! That’s why you’re here! There I sang in front of Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder and Jamie Foxx. Jamie ignored my presence and when I sang he completely changed and said I could use his studio whenever I wanted. So we became friends and hung out. Very Los Angeles…”
The last 20 years have been a series of moments for Bedingfield that bother me.
“One time I was at Adam Levine’s house from Maroon 5 and Prince came over. “I felt like I was in a movie,” he says. “Everyone got into their cars in the convoy and went home. It was dark outside so I didn’t know where we were going. We get there and everyone is making music, my friend Salma is dancing to Hayek, and me and Adam look at each other and think f______ we’re at Prince’s house! “I remember Prince telling me to come back whenever I wanted, but then he didn’t give me his number and I didn’t know where we were so I never came back.”
It was a different story in England. Although Bedingfield’s second album reached the NB Top Ten, the album’s promotional tour was canceled so that she could focus on her burgeoning success in the US. A re-recorded version of the same album was later released under the title Pocketful of Sunshine, containing seven new songs.
“These new songs saved it but then they weren’t released in England and I don’t know why,” he says. “I guess artists didn’t have that much power back then. If you’re at a record label, you have to get them on your side and do what they really want. He had very clear ideas about the kind of artist I would be and what had worked for him in the past. That’s what Dido did, they said, and she had taken a big blow before me. He always wore jeans, so you should wear jeans too. “My biggest fight with them was that I didn’t want to wear skirts, so I wore a lot of big, colorful skirts, and that was my big win.”
To make matters worse, Bedingfield said his hashtag geoblocked him, effectively restricting access to his US appearances to anyone in the UK.
“My English company geoblocked me, so everything I did in America you couldn’t see here. When I sang at the White House, my mother couldn’t watch the song online. Even five years ago there was a time when record companies were still doing this and I don’t know why. This was difficult. But I continued to work. You just go where love is.”
While his fame soared across the Atlantic, it waned in the UK, and his third album, Strip Me, was never even released there. Her relentlessly upbeat pop music and always sunny personality made her an easy target for ridicule, and she was mercilessly mocked for everything from her Christian upbringing to her relationship with her brother Daniel, the pop star best known for his song “If You Not The One.”
“The paparazzi were always nice to me, but they were very mean to my brother, because they couldn’t keep two siblings doing well at the same time,” he says. “It’s interesting what that does to a culture because even if they don’t treat you badly, there’s a danger that they will and you end up living in that fear. This culture encourages you to have good behavior, just like religion does. There is the threat of going to hell or someone turning their back on you and hating you.
“My philosophy is that I don’t take anything too seriously. If people say great things or bad things, I try to take it with a grain of salt because things can change. Now more than ever, we all experience this instantaneous feedback; We’re all famous, aren’t we?”
He is equally matter-of-fact about his unusual childhood, where he was home-schooled by his New Zealand parents and raised in what he calls “alternative Christianity”, attending the famous Micah Community church in South London founded by R&B gospel pioneers. Wade brothers.
“As children, we were quite fortunate to have the concept of being spiritual beings connected to something greater than ourselves. This culture of music, spirituality and community was very powerful for me and I think it had a huge impact on me.
In fact, all four of the Bedingfield siblings – Natasha, Daniel, brother Joshua and sister Nikola – are now professional singers, despite the fact that they weren’t even allowed to listen to the radio when they were growing up.
“Isn’t that ironic?” says. “But I think maybe if you are raised in a vacuum and you let your kids get bored, that becomes a gift for them and they end up creating their own fun. It was actually my father who finally told me to drop out of college and pursue music. How unusual is this?”
It took Bedingfield longer to accept her own trajectory as a pop star. “For a while I felt a bit rebellious against the idea of what pop was because it wasn’t always cool,” he admits. “Actually, I write two or three times more sad songs than happy ones, which is what comes naturally from me, but people don’t like it. For me, the hits are more uplifting.”
Her son Solomon’s marriage with her husband, California businessman Matt Robinson, in late 2017 changed her perspective. Although he’s been mostly in New York, he’s excited to focus his energies on the UK this year, celebrating the unexpected resurgence of Unwrite and getting back into the studio to write new music.
“I thought having kids would be the end of my career because everyone told me that,” she says. “But four months later I signed a new deal and started recording, and now it’s all happened. In the 1980s, this version of feminism that told us we could have it all was sold, and many people in my generation learned that we had to choose. You can’t have it all. You have to choose what you have and really own it. You can be a mother and have a job, but you have to have support around you and really work at it, which means I really make the most of the time I have. “I don’t take any of this for granted anymore.”
Cambridge Club Festival will take place 7-9 June at Childerley Orchard, Cambridge. Tickets: thecambridgeclub.co