{"id":656757,"date":"2026-10-25T15:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T15:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/656757\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T15:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T15:34:09","slug":"natasha-bedingfield-looks-back-i-had-hits-in-the-us-that-werent-released-in-england-it-was-like-being-banished-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/656757\/","title":{"rendered":"Natasha Bedingfield looks back: \u2018I had hits in the US that weren\u2019t released in England. It was like being banished\u2019 | Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Natasha Bedingfield wearing a bright-red tracksuit, standing in a garden in 1984 and recreating the image in 2026<\/a>Natasha Bedingfield in 1984 and 2026. Later photograph: Simon Webb. Styling: Andie Redman. Hair and makeup: Lisa Laudat at The Wall Group. Archive photograph: courtesy of Natasha Bedingfield<\/p>\n

Born in London in 1981, Natasha Bedingfield is a\u00a0singer and songwriter. Her 2004 debut album, Unwritten, sold more than 2.3m copies and featured the No 1 single These Words. She has released three further albums, scoring UK Top 10 hits and success in\u00a0the US with Pocketful of Sunshine. Nearly two decades after it was released, her single Unwritten became a viral TikTok hit in 2021. Her new single, Dot Dot Dot, is out now.<\/p>\n

This was taken at Hilly Fields park in south-east London. I\u2019m dressed in\u00a0a sweet little tracksuit. I was a cute kid: I\u00a0sucked my thumb until I was 11 and I had a sheepskin that I sniffed. But if anyone actually said I was cute, I\u2019d\u00a0reply: \u201cNo, I\u2019m not!\u201d I wanted to be\u00a0taken seriously. That word made me think that nobody was listening to\u00a0what I had to say.<\/p>\n

My parents come from New Zealand, and when they had my brother Daniel<\/a> they emigrated to England where they\u00a0then had me and my two younger siblings. We lived in the inner city, so our backyard was a saviour. Together we were a pack and would spend all day making forts and watching frogs in\u00a0the\u00a0pond. We didn\u2019t have much money, but I was rich in love.<\/p>\n

I come from a family of big thinkers. My parents are social workers and raised us to believe that everyone is equal. We were taught that you should talk to everyone, as you never know when you could be standing in front of\u00a0an angel. Mum and Dad wanted each of us to learn in our own way, outside of a system, so I was home-schooled from 11 until 16. Back then it was a\u00a0rebellious thing to do, but I\u00a0loved self-study. I am overwhelmed by loudness, so the fact I didn\u2019t have to learn in a full class of students worked for me. It\u2019s ironic, really, considering my profession, but too much noise makes me shut down. Is\u00a0that a\u00a0neurodiversity thing? Probably.<\/p>\n

As well as my parents\u2019 outside-the-box approach, another big influence on my childhood was church. Every week we would go to a Jamaican church, one that really encouraged kids to get into music. I loved the culture there \u2013 as well as singing, we had a strong community of people of all ages.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI still feel so alive when I am making songs. It\u2019s that buzz of expressing an emotion that everyone feels<\/p>\n

When I was 18, I started travelling on the tube and doing late-night writing sessions with producers. My brother was the more obvious musician in the family. Daniel would be at home, saying things like, \u201cEveryone be quiet \u2013 I\u2019m recording!\u201d Whereas I was more private \u2013 writing but keeping it to myself. Why? Some friendly acquaintances \u2013 family, friends \u2013 warned me that it might be hard to have two Bedingfields in the industry. \u201cIt\u2019s very rare that it would happen for both of you,\u201d they\u2019d say. So\u00a0I decided to get on with it quietly. In\u00a0the end I said to my brother: \u201cI know this is your thing, but it\u2019s actually my thing, too. And I\u2019m not trying to take over from you.\u201d He, of course, supported me entirely.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, I started studying psychology at university. I\u00a0found the whole process stressful \u2013 I\u00a0often felt dizzy, and struggled to learn all of the names and dates. My\u00a0dad ended up saying: \u201cWe all know\u00a0that you\u2019re a singer-songwriter \u2013 that is what you should be doing.\u201d He was the one who encouraged me\u00a0to\u00a0leave university and I will be for\u00a0ever grateful.<\/p>\n

When I started out, my label told me that I was a pop artist. But I wasn\u2019t Britney. I didn\u2019t even know what pop meant at the time, because I wasn\u2019t keeping an eye on the charts, I didn\u2019t listen to the radio. Even as a teenager I\u00a0never had boybands on my wall. I\u00a0was a fan of Coldplay, Bj\u00f6rk, India Arie and Stevie Wonder. I didn\u2019t want to mime, or pole dance. I was just trying to be authentic. The only time I did learn a dance routine was for the video for Single. I did a few moves, then felt weird. They wanted to make me sexy, but the whole thing looked forced. It\u00a0was frustrating. Female artists often get boiled down to how we look and it\u00a0takes away from the substance of what we\u2019re actually saying.<\/p>\n

I wrote Unwritten for my younger brother. It started as a poem, and then I tried to make it into a song with other writers, but they wanted to take a different approach, to do the whole blond bombshell pop type of thing. Then I met Danielle Brisebois [from New Radicals] and together we clicked and made Unwritten. The whole process felt simple. I wasn\u2019t showing off vocally. I was just singing to my brother. I didn\u2019t think about whether it\u00a0would be a hit.<\/p>\n

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After the success of my first album, I\u00a0started taking myself less seriously in\u00a0my lyrics. I\u2019d grown into my humour, which is where a song like I Wanna Have Your Babies comes from. The track was restricted by BBC Radio 2 as they thought it was encouraging young people to have kids. But, really, it was meant to make people laugh as it was about the thoughts you never say out loud when you are dating someone new. In the end, my label sent me to the US \u2013 a way to test out my career without other parts of the world watching. They essentially geo-blocked me. I had hits in the US, but they were not released in England. I even sang at the White House for Obama, and my mum couldn\u2019t watch it. It was a bit like being banished. The\u00a0only bonus was that being a Briton in the US meant I could get away with certain things. Because I\u00a0taught myself\u00a0to read, there were some words I knew how to write but not say out loud. In my song These Words, I use the word hyperbole. A\u00a0word I had never said out loud before. I sang it wrong for a long time, but told the Americans that was how you pronounced it in England.<\/p>\n

After that I left my label and had a 10-year period where I was doing a\u00a0lot of corporate shows and touring. I got married, had a baby and kept on songwriting. I wrote with some Swedish songwriters, but the songs didn\u2019t show much growth. Then around the pandemic, people started making up dances to Unwritten. It went viral and I started having a resurgence. Some friends called and said: \u201cNatasha, you have to become part of the conversation.\u201d I didn\u2019t get it at first. I thought TikTok was just a\u00a0dance app and I didn\u2019t want to dance. But once I saw the videos I\u00a0realised it was a\u00a0creative place to be. I\u2019ve\u00a0embraced the\u00a0song\u2019s new life ever since.<\/p>\n

My goal now is to write my Purple Rain. I haven\u2019t written my best songs yet and I want a timeless classic. Getting older doesn\u2019t threaten me \u2013 artists like\u00a0Tina Turner had careers that took off when they were my age. I\u00a0find that so inspiring, as so often it\u2019s,\u00a0like, women are written off when they reach a certain age.<\/p>\n

I still feel so alive when I am making songs. It\u2019s that buzz of expressing an emotion that everyone feels, but is hard to articulate without music. I don\u2019t get excited about the things other people do \u2013 I don\u2019t like going to Disneyland or holiday resorts. Even on my birthday I would rather be in a\u00a0recording studio, making songs and\u00a0geeking out about a triple entendre, than at a party. I don\u2019t think that will ever change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Natasha Bedingfield wearing a bright-red tracksuit, standing in a garden in 1984 and recreating the image in 2026Natasha…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-656757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}