A series where artists share their musical firsts and lasts.
“It’s a very exciting time for artists right now because you don’t need to have a label.”
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: WireImage (Steve Jennings, Joseph Okpako), Getty Images (Jo Hale, Neilson Barnard, Alberto E. Rodriguez, Tim Mosenfelder)
Natasha Bedingfield’s music has functioned as sonic dopamine ever since she emerged from the U.K. in the mid-aughts. The three-pronged classics “These Words,” “Pocketful of Sunshine,” and “Love Like This” will make even the most rigid of millennials crack a smile. That is, until the grand pooh-bah makes its entrance and you just can’t stop beaming: “Unwritten,” one of the undisputed greatest hits of the 21st century, an ode to controlling your destiny. (This writer sang it proudly at her middle-school graduation with 14 other students.) Bedingfield is currently tinkering away on her upcoming sixth album, which she’s using as an opportunity to reflect on what she hopes to achieve with her own experiences.
“I want people to go on a journey,” Bedingfield explains. “Some people say their inner child is being healed — my music is doing something for people. So when I’m writing the new music, which is nearly finished, I’m picturing things like Coldplay and Massive Attack shows where they have elements of organic human music, real vocals, and no autotune. That’s where I’m going.” For now, the singer-songwriter is our latest “Music History” guest, regaling us with stories about feeling way too claustrophobic while filming The Masked Singer, how Lady Gaga once opened for her on the road, and the review that affected her the most.
The unique thing about my upbringing is that we weren’t allowed to listen to the radio. We were raised in quite a vacuum devoid of pop songs, so it’s ironic that I ended up writing pop songs with my brother. We ended up having hit songs on the radio, and we didn’t grow up listening to radio. I went to the library and found Songs in the Key of Life, by Stevie Wonder. I was like, What is this? This is amazing. That’s one of my formative records.
There were a few records we would play to death. I mean, I’m getting old now; that was when we were listening to actual records. We also loved Disney. We were raised in church, so we listened to a lot of Christian music. A lot of actual music was happening in church. The Cardigans — the record with them sitting on the couch, my sister and I played that to death — Björk and Lauryn Hill. I remember being a teenager and India.Arie came out with that amazing Voyage to India record and I was like, What is that? I love that. There’s a lot of soul. As I got older and started to want to be a singer, I realized it was a big challenge to have a unique voice. A lot of the singers sound the same. One of the things I thought to be clever was just listening to male singers. So I listened to Steve Wonder, Sting, Bono, and the Rolling Stones — a lot of male, gutsy singers.
We had a great teacher in school called Francis, who was amazing at teaching creativity, how to write poetry, and how to write music. She was one of the early people who saw me and my brother. He’s my older brother and one of those “very talented” children, while I was quiet and under the radar. I didn’t feel people really noticed me as a child. I mean, they noticed me as a person, but not, Hey, this is going to be a talented person. We always thought it was going to just be my brother. And then my sister and I loved harmonies — we loved singing and forced our brother to let us sing with him. He’s my biggest mentor. He’s the one who taught me how to sing in harmonies. He’s really hard on me: That’s out of tune. Do it again. Tough love.
Justin Timberlake. He was doing a tour around Europe, and I was opening for him there. It was in those really huge arenas, and it felt fun because it was like being in school — there were all the corridors backstage, and everyone just hung around there. The thing I noticed about Justin is whenever he comes into the room, you don’t notice. You’re cracking a joke and suddenly he’s there on your shoulder and he’s joining in. The other thing I noticed is he never says good-bye. You look around and he’s gone. He’s the loveliest person to be on tour with. He was dating Jessica Biel at the time. His whole band had good, real musicians and great dancers.
The other one was … I can’t remember the boy band. I wasn’t into boy bands, but I was opening for a boy band and Lady Gaga was opening for me. Oh, New Kids on the Block. It was the very beginning of Lady Gaga. She just had one outfit, and it was the white cube dress. She wore it every day. From the very beginning, she was determined and had this amazing self-belief. My husband overheard her talking to her team and she was saying, “I want to do it with Eminem. I want to be on Rolling Stone. I want to be on this.” This is a brand-new artist just releasing her first single. We were like, Oh wow. Americans are very good at self-belief: I’m going to visualize this, I’m going to be there.
But it wasn’t just her thinking and saying, “I’m going to be doing this.” She worked really hard. In the mornings, she would go to radio stations, she would do the show with me and New Kids on the Block, and then she would go and do nightclubs every night. I remember being really impressed and happy for her. She changed the industry. She actually made it. I’ve had many times in my life when I’ve met people just before they break huge. After a while, you start to be able to recognize that fairy dust someone else has. Nicki Minaj is another. I was on tour and got a call from our team saying, “This is going to be the next Gaga. She’s finishing her record. Can you be on it? She’s a fan.” And I was like, “Okay, yeah, after my tour.” And they were like, “No, you have to do it now because the record is closing.” Wherever we were, we booked a studio and recorded it that night. The song ended up on Pink Friday.
Years ago when you released a song in England, they had something called Top of the Pops. It was such a great show where you got a chance to showcase your song. And then if it was a good song, by the end of the week, sometimes it would be a hit. That’s what happened to me. I sang my song “Single,” which is my first song. How I love a double meaning. I was like, Oh, I’ll have a single called “Single,” and I’m single. It spread like wildfire by the end of the week. It was No. 1, and that was a bizarre feeling. I think the weirdest part was going to the airport and walking through where they’re searching you. They pulled me over and I’m like, Oh no, I’m in trouble. I don’t want to be searched. And then they’re like, “Are you her?” I’m like, Yes, I am. Don’t I get a massage? Just feel me up a bit.
The Concert for Diana. It was at Wembley Stadium. I mean, I just sang one song, but it was an amazing feeling. The bigger the crowd, the easier it is and the nicer it feels. I later found out it was 80,000 people and I was like, Oh, that’s why I liked it. The thing is, you have a lot of lights in your eyes. You can’t actually see the bigger crowds. The weird thing is the British press is so nasty. I remember the next day all they could talk about was my stripper shoes. They were just high heels. I like wearing platforms. Instead of them feeling like they cripple, you just have an extra bit on the toes so your feet aren’t perpendicular. For some reason, they thought my shoes looked like stripper shoes. I still use platforms because it’s a better way to run around.
I remember a review that said my first album sounded like “an American Idol record” where every song was different from the others. I was like, Fair enough, because what they were saying was what had happened — every song was written by me and different writers, so it didn’t have one producer all the way through. Every song used different sounds. I thought that was a good critique. On albums since then, I’m much more like, What’s the actual overall sound of the album?
The funny thing is that everybody, almost everybody, I meet tells me they have a best friend who looks exactly like me. I guess I look like people’s best friends, so I’m like, Okay, great. And then they’ll show me a picture of their friend and I’m like, “I don’t know.” I don’t think I look like Ellie Golding, but I love how she looks so that’s definitely a compliment for me. She’s an amazing artist and songwriter. We should have us in a lineup and maybe Ellie could get away with some stuff and say it was my fault.
I feel like I had autonomy from the beginning. I was quite lucky. I was signed by songwriters who let me be part of the whole process, including the production. As I progressed, I realized some of those things can feel like an illusion of control. Especially when it got into the big record-label people, they would be like, “Oh, we’ve got to do a music video. Can you choose this director or this director? But you have one hour to make a decision and you can’t bring other directors to the table.” It’s a gradual thawing out. I think it’s like a consciousness as women — as we become aware of our own conditioning, what the patriarchy is, and things like that, then we start to go, Oh wow, I’m actually taking more control now. Sometimes having other people in charge, it can feel almost like if I make a mistake, I can just blame them. It was actually a bit scarier to have full autonomy when I left my label because you don’t realize how much we attach to having a label and how much we think that makes us a real artist.
Then you have to go on this journey and find that real artist for yourself. It’s a very exciting time for artists right now because you don’t need to have a label. You have artists like Raye. I was at the Brit Awards a year ago and all of these record companies were there; she won all the awards and all the labels were upset. You could see them just kind of fuming and leaving. But she’s an unsigned artist who’s doing her own thing and it’s much more authentic. That’s what people want. It’s a wonderful time, but you kind of have to do it all. I love when the record labels get upset.
I get claustrophobic, and I really didn’t like being in a mask so I wore the mask extra long; I would put it on half an hour before going onstage so I could get used to it. I would feel so panicky. They were really surprised. I was in the corridor doing deep breaths. I did not like it: Let me out. The mask was heavy, and it’s really hard to think through. I don’t know if many people talk about that, but not everyone is claustrophobic. I think I’ve got asthma. My brother used to put blankets over my head when I was a kid. It just brings back all of those things. I don’t like feeling trapped. It’s the weirdest show; you’re not allowed to talk to anybody backstage. They hide you from the other contestants. You wear something that says “Don’t talk to me,” and you wear a mask the whole time. It’s the most lonely show. They’re great, but it’s just a bizarre thing. It’s a good show, though. I like watching the show from the other side of the mask. Did I ruin it for you? I ruined it for you. Everyone’s different. I guess some people love being squashed but not me.
It’s amazing when you sing a song like that and people haven’t heard it yet and then, by the end of the few months you’ve been promoting it, they’re screaming it with you. It’s that moment when people are singing along with all of their heart when you go, This is something special. It’s not something that’s just about me. A lot of times, artists onstage are kind of selling themselves: Hey, worship me. I’m a genius. There’s a little element of that, especially the Michael Jackson era; you could see how he was actually an idol. A lot of pop music is like that, but it’s kind of creating this illusion of a perfect person. I heard Billy Corgan talking about it recently. With a song like “Unwritten,” there’s something in the song itself that captured people. That’s what I love. It’s my greatest joy and my greatest achievement. My big desire was that I could make music that would become people’s anthems and become something for them. Me and Danielle Brisebois, who I wrote it with, we’re like, Wow, we did that. There must’ve been some other elements in the room.
It was Emma Stone’s breakout moment, where we all discovered her. I loved watching Easy A because a family member, when they first heard “Pocketful of Sunshine,” told me it was an annoying song. So it’s funny to me that’s what Emma’s character says in the scene: “Most annoying song ever.” Then it ended up being an earworm for her and she ended up loving it. It felt like a good eff-you to that family member: Yeah, maybe it was annoying, but maybe it was also important. My label made me rewrite the verse a few times because the big boss said, “I like the song, but I don’t know. If I like the song, does that mean that other people will? I like some really cool dark stuff, so maybe we need to make it more pop. Or maybe that verse is a chorus.” So we tried to write different verses, but we kept coming back to this. It’s how it had to be. I would love to meet Emma Stone. I feel like she’s a riot. She seems like someone who’s the best elements of her characters.