BBC Radio 1’s recent Big Weekend festival featured some pretty big current artists – Haim, Sam Fender, Wet Leg and Jade, for example – but a browse of the viewing stats for the performance videos on YouTube reveals that one of the most popular is of a song that was released back in 2004.
We’re talking about Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten – a Top 5 hit more than 20 years ago and, more recently, a viral sensation. Like Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder On The Dancefloor, Unwritten is a noughties pop classic that was given a contemporary boost after being featured in a movie, 2023’s Anyone but You, going on to become a TikTok favourite (Ellis-Bexter’s song was used in 2023’s Saltburn).
Speaking to Music Week about Unwritten’s resurgence in 2024, Bedingfield said: “It feels like a perfect example of the universe making things happen, because I’d been saying, ‘We need to celebrate the anniversary!’ The film really feels like a homage to the song, the director gave me so much love – and the track and movie together have become a hit.”
Bedingfield’s initial success followed that of her brother, Daniel, and she says that it was when she started collaborating with Danielle Brisebois, Unwritten’s co-writer, that things started to click.
“I’d had this poem I’d written for my 14-year-old brother sitting in my pocket, but when I’d shown it to others, they’d wanted me to write more ‘sexy’ stuff, so I always thought I would just wait,” she says. “But when I started working with Danielle and Wayne (Rodrigues) – a beatmaker and producer Danielle had introduced me to – I thought these were good people to do it with.”
Of the song’s beginnings, Bedingfield says: “We’d been working on another song and at the end I’d said, ‘I have this other idea!’, which was the poem, and that I wanted to work on this song with guitar. They were just like, ‘Let’s do it’, and we started Unwritten. Wayne was a spinning- records kind of DJ, and he had these great little loops and samples he’d made. He started creating these kinds of record scratches, and we began Unwritten with that ‘Ah’ sample at the start of the song.”
Unwritten might have a sunny, carefree feel, but Bedingfield says that it wasn’t one of those songs that came out fully formed, and that it required a fair bit of graft.
“The hardest part was the chorus,” she explains. “At the end of the day, we didn’t have one and were quite frustrated. It’s hard to write a positive song, because you have a lot to say, but you have these moments where you think, ‘Ooh, that’s cheesy’ or, ‘That’s been said before’. So we decided to come back the next day, and while we were away, Danielle’s husband (Nick Lashley) played around with some guitar parts and Wayne did some new chords. When we were back in, it all just came together. Danielle and I have the same sort of mind when we write – we finish each other’s sentences, so we just locked in and got in the flow.”
When it came to recording the song, Bedingfield says that, because of her church background, she was keen to have a choir involved, but the budget wouldn’t stretch to that. So she and her sister, Nikola, along with backing singer Jessi Collins, decided to get creative.
“We sang the ‘Staring, at the blank page…’ (section) about 100 times!” remembers Bedingfield. “We gathered around the mic and sang in different tones – loud, soft, low, to mimic a choir.”
Bedingfield says now that, when they were making Unwritten, she worried that it would date, so she’s delighted that it’s managed to span the generations and reach a new audience. That said, she admits that it captured a moment that she wouldn’t be able to replicate.
“Songwriting is an amazing thing; you’re putting up an antenna and listening to what’s going on in the culture around you, and channelling it. But did Unwritten change the way I write? Well, I’m always changing the way I write. I don’t think I could ever write another Unwritten because I’m constantly learning new things… And because I put all my wise sayings into one song!”
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