{"id":39045,"date":"2025-08-02T03:26:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T03:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/39045\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T03:26:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T03:26:14","slug":"natasha-bedingfield-and-paul-heaton-open-21st-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/39045\/","title":{"rendered":"Natasha Bedingfield and Paul Heaton open 21st festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steven McKenzie<\/p>\n

BBC Highlands and Islands reporter<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC ALBA<\/p>\n

Natasha Bedingfield performed on Belladrum’s main stage<\/p>\n

The 21st Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival opened on Thursday with main stage performances by Natasha Bedingfield and Paul Heaton.<\/p>\n

About 20,000 people are expected to attend the Highlands’ biggest music event over its three days.<\/p>\n

Pop and R&B act Bedingfield brought her own twist, covering two songs from the 1990s – Portishead’s Glory Box and The Cranberries’ Zombie – during her set before finishing with her 2004 hit Unwritten.<\/p>\n

Later, Heaton was joined by Lanarkshire singer Rianne Downey – one of this year’s TRNSMT stars<\/a> – for his performance in front of a packed Hot House stage crowd.<\/p>\n

Bella’s second day acts include Supergrass and CMAT – who were at Glastonbury earlier this summer – as well as Skippinish, Karine Polwart and a DJ set by Gok Wan.<\/p>\n

Football-mad Heaton, a Sheffield United fan, visited the grounds of Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Highland League club Clachnacuddin before pitching up at Bella, near Beauly.<\/p>\n

The former The Beautiful South and The Housemartins frontman is also known for his strong views on politics and social issues.<\/p>\n

He sang his protest song Heatongrad, and alongside Downey performed some of The Beautiful South’s greatest hits, including Song for Whoever and Don’t Marry Her.<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC ALBA<\/p>\n

Paul Heaton visited football grounds in Inverness before pitching up at Belladrum<\/p>\n

\"Rianne<\/p>\n

Scottish singer Rianne Downey was a special guest during Heaton’s set<\/p>\n

Bella is usually blessed by fine weather, but Thursday was mostly a day of drizzly showers before clearing up in the evening – avoiding a repeat of 2017’s “mud fest”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Other acts across the festival site on Friday will include Inverness’ own Katie Gregson-MacLeod.<\/p>\n

In 2022, when she was a student and working in a coffee shop, the singer-songwriter became a sensation after posting a 45-second clip to TikTok<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Overnight, the chorus of her song Complex amassed 100,000 views and comments from musicians Gracie Abrams, Lennon Stella and Maisie Peters.<\/p>\n

\"Katie<\/p>\n

Katie Gregson-MacLeod, from Inverness, is among the artists performing on Friday<\/p>\n

Gregson-MacLeod told BBC Scotland News: “Belladrum was my first festival experience.<\/p>\n

“I first came here in 2011 – I still have the t-shirt.<\/p>\n

“I was about nine or 10 and me and my friend played these characters.<\/p>\n

“We tied ties around our heads and we drew on moustaches and had temporary tattoos all over our faces, which my Mum was really pleased about.”<\/p>\n

The musician first played at Bella when she was 18, but said she was most nervous about a performance just weeks before the Tik Tok clip went viral.<\/p>\n

She said: “I played the Hot House stage at 12pm on the Friday with a full band, and that felt like my biggest Belladrum moment.”<\/p>\n

After this year’s Bella, Gregson-MacLeod has a series of tours including one with Glasgow singer Lizzie Reid, as well as shows with Matt Maltese and Tom Odell.<\/p>\n

Next year she has a debut album coming out.<\/p>\n

“It’s going to be a busy few months,” she said.<\/p>\n

Friday featured Bella’s usually eclectic mix of genres.<\/p>\n

The afternoon’s entertainment included Perth funk band Bohemian Monk Machine singing about an alien invasion.<\/p>\n

They also performed a cover of Kool and the Gang’s 1970s hit Jungle Boogie.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, around the same time, Country and Western group The Libby Koch Band were singing a “good ole Texas” tune about evicting an unwanted ex-lover.<\/p>\n

BBC Alba is providing live coverage of the festival and iPlayer broadcasts across the weekend.<\/p>\n

The shows can be watched live or on demand from Thursday on Belladrum on BBC Alba<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steven McKenzie BBC Highlands and Islands reporter BBC ALBA Natasha Bedingfield performed on Belladrum’s main stage The 21st…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-39045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}