{"id":6956,"date":"2024-08-09T09:33:54","date_gmt":"2024-08-09T09:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/i-felt-i-wasnt-wanted-in-england\/"},"modified":"2024-08-09T09:33:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T09:33:54","slug":"i-felt-i-wasnt-wanted-in-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/i-felt-i-wasnt-wanted-in-england\/","title":{"rendered":"I felt I wasn’t wanted in England"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Natasha Bedingfield returned to the UK charts in January after an absence of 17 years <\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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A wise woman once said: today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten.<\/i><\/p>\n

“People have really held on to it and it’s become kind of like a motto,” says Natasha Bedingfield, 20 years after first staring at the blank page before her.<\/p>\n

After returning to the charts this year, Natasha tells BBC Newsbeat: “I didn’t even know Unwritten would be the song that would have the staying power”.<\/p>\n

“Because there were cooler songs. It’s very hard to write positive songs without being cringey.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Unwritten, with its ethos of releasing your inhibitions and feeling the rain on your skin, managed to avoid the cringey pitfalls and has become Natasha’s most streamed song by far. <\/p>\n

By this point, you should be fully earwormed. <\/p>\n

The track, taken from her debut album of the same name, peaked at number six in the UK charts almost exactly 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

Recently though it’s been having another moment, spending 20 weeks in the Top 40 since January after an absence of 17 years.<\/p>\n

That’s thanks in part to being featured in 2023 movie Anyone But You but – and this won’t surprise anyone – TikTok also had a hand in its renewed success.<\/p>\n

Almost 700,000 videos have been uploaded using Unwritten as the soundtrack – everything from GRWMs to proposals.<\/p>\n

“We worry about technology but sometimes there’s some good things that come from it,” says Natasha. <\/p>\n

“I think the fact that it’s connecting everybody is amazing. <\/p>\n

“It’s given people a lot more power to talk to their fans directly.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For Natasha though, the song is nothing new – fans are just catching up.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been singing it all along,” she says. “The new thing is being back in England.”<\/p>\n

The singer-songwriter now lives in New York and says she’s better known in the US after her releases since Unwritten struggled to break through in the UK.<\/p>\n

“I kind of got a message that people didn’t want me in England,” she says, even though she says she’ll always consider the country home.<\/p>\n

“My music didn’t get heard in England anymore.”<\/p>\n

So she was surprised when, in 2022, Lewis Capaldi asked her to open for him at the O2 in London.<\/p>\n

“Everyone was singing along to every word of every song,” Natasha says. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"GettyGetty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Unwritten was taken from Natasha’s debut album of the same name in 2004<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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It’s not the first time the power of social media has given a new lease of life to an old track.<\/p>\n

Think back to January when Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder On The Dancefloor – first released in 2001 – was storming the charts<\/a> thanks to a Saltburn-inspired TikTok trend.<\/p>\n

“Because of social media, the whole world is united in such a great way,” says Natasha.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On Thursday night, she worked with TikTok on a performance alongside Cat Burns for the Team GB athletes in Paris which was later shared on the app. <\/p>\n

TikTok is an official partner of Team GB and broadcast Natasha and Cat performing for the athletes to fans around the world.<\/p>\n

The platform says more than a million users have engaged with the Olympics hashtag – almost a 2,000% increase compared with Tokyo 2020.<\/p>\n

TikTok says that so far 43,590 creators have made Olympics-tagged content for Paris, up from just 3,151 by this point in Tokyo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Natasha told Newsbeat she was excited to gig for the athletes – especially knowing the impact music can have on their performances.<\/p>\n

“I actually get a lot of feedback in my DMs from athletes that songs like Unwritten or Pocket Full of Sunshine really help them,” Natasha says. <\/p>\n

She says she met Team GB canoeist Kimberley Woods who told her she listened to Unwritten before bagging a bronze medal.<\/p>\n

“That’s so cool,” Natasha says.<\/p>\n

“Those are some of the songs that people like to listen to to recentre themselves.<\/p>\n

“You really have to keep giving yourself pep talks and you have to be in the right mindset,” she says.<\/p>\n

“Being a winner is actually very psychological.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen to Newsbeat live<\/a> at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Getty Images Natasha Bedingfield returned to the UK charts in January after an absence of 17 years A wise woman once said: today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten. “People have really held on to it and it’s become kind of like a motto,” says Natasha Bedingfield, 20 years after first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[279],"tags":[278,397,4084,4083],"class_list":["post-6956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsbeat","tag-england","tag-felt","tag-wanted","tag-wasnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6958,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956\/revisions\/6958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}