Natasha Bedingfield
THE REST IS STILL UNWRITTEN
PHOTOS BY: EMILY NEVILLE FISHER
FLOWERS: ELA FLOWERS
Natasha Bedingfield is the chart- topping singer/songwriter best known for catchy tunes like Love Like This, Strip Me, Freckles, These Words, Wild Horses, Neon Lights, and of course her massive hit singles Unwritten and Pocketful of Sunshine. She’s also become well known as an advocate for LGBTQ rights and the environment. However, because Natasha keeps her private life private, and maintains a pretty low profile, it’s not too well known that Natasha and her husband, Matt Robinson, a writer and real estate investor, and their curious and charming six- year-old son, Solomon, are now Bedford residents!
“It’s so exciting watching Solomon discover – and discovering through his eyes. Right now he loves numbers and letters, but what he wants to be changes every day! It’s just so fun and amazing to see. It’s refreshing to see life through the eyes of your child,” Natasha gleams. “You know there’s a theory that a child finds their parents — and I really believe Solomon chose us. He’s a really incredible kid. He’s traveled the whole world as such a young child. Matt and I were together for a long time before we had him, and he came at exactly the right time in each of our lives.”
“Matt and I are both creative outside of the box thinkers which is one of the things that drew us to each other,” Natasha shares. “We lived in L.A. for 15 years and have enjoyed buying and fixing up properties several times around the country. We bought the property in Bedford two years ago, and are loving renovating it together! I love how Matt loves to explore diverse subjects, I don’t know anyone who is as talented in as many things. He taught himself to play the guitar and other instruments. He’s a very warm person and I always have felt at home with him and protected. I love having a family together.”
“I grew up in a happy and musical home with parents who really supported creativity and encouraged us to connect with ourselves and with nature. Everything was on a foundation of love. My parents are amazing people and, most of all, they taught us the value of kindness and instilled in us self-confidence,” Natasha shares. “We went to church a lot and were surrounded by music there, and it was a space where we really connected with our voices and with something higher than ourselves.”
Natasha’s family immigrated to the United Kingdom from New Zealand before she was born, and Natasha was raised in London. “London was such a fun place to grow up! I had a lot of independence from a really young age, and there was a pretty big music scene,” Natasha recalls.
“My older brother, Daniel, was actually the first Bedingfield to start writing and performing music. He’d always be up in his bedroom recording. He’d yell at us to be quiet so we wouldn’t mess up his track. …As a younger sister I thought making music was cool…because that’s what my older brother was doing. So I started kind of doing my own thing and writing songs too. …In the early 2000s my brother got a record deal and his song, Gotta Get Thru This, totally blew up and was #1 in the UK, and he would tell some of his managers, ‘just wait until you hear my little sister’!…And, eventually, someone decided to take a listen and liked what they heard.”
MUSIC HAS THE ABILITY TO SPEAK FROM A PLACE OF TRUST AND A PLACE OF TRUTH IN A WAY THAT IS NON-THREATENING
Bedingfield’s Unwritten, which was originally released in the US in 2005, spent 42 weeks in the Billboard top 100 and reached #1 on the AC Charts, declares:
RELEASE YOUR INHIBITIONS,
FEEL THE RAIN ON YOUR SKIN,
NO ONE ELSE CAN FEEL IT FOR YOU,
ONLY YOU CAN LET IT IN!
…The words are uplifting – even without a tune and a beat! “The song started as a poem for my younger brother,” Natasha explains. “The idea is that we are all blank pages. Every child starts life with a pen and a blank piece of paper, and though people can try, nobody can tell you what to be… you have to work out your own story to figure out who you are! I collaborated on the song with Danielle Brisebois, who was a child star on Norman Lear’s seminal TV sitcom All In The Family and then in the band the New Radicals. We wrote it with the intention of inspiring young people, who are sort of just starting their own life, to live with the idea that your story is in your hands!”.
“Nature is a key theme for me, and inspires a lot of my writing,” says Natasha. “I spend as much time as possible during my songwriting process outdoors. A big part of my connection to nature goes back to my connection with New Zealand. With all of my extended family there, I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in New Zealand, and I feel in tune with their ‘bare feet’ culture. When you’re in New Zealand you see how, on a small island, environmental impacts are so amplified and undeniable.”
“My goal is to be an environmental steward, and even more generally to use my voice to reduce human suffering. It’s all connected – poverty and the environment,” Natasha declares. “I’ve always avoided public speaking, preferring to express myself through song instead of talk, but speaking-out about the environment feels natural because I care about it so much.”
“…My mom is a long-time activist, and has an organization called Global Angels. She’s always said ‘We have to change the world’…and it was never an option to think we wouldn’t! She also constantly reminded me that New Zealand was the first country that gave women the right to vote and instilled in me the conviction that there’s nothing that a woman can’t do. I feel so compelled to play my part to make the world a better place, for others, and for my own son.”
To attract global attention to the cause of environmentalism, Natasha has twice performed at the United Nations, including a performance together with Paul McCartny and Sheryl Crow of her song Lovesong To The Earth. At the national level, Natasha has worked with Waterkeeper Alliance to help raise awareness of their mission and support the positive impact that organization is having on the environment. And, on the local level, Natasha has become involved with Bedford2030 and, upon becoming friends with Murray and Emily Fisher – who were featured in the March/April issue of B&NC MAG, has even invited Murray to share a panel with her addressing the United Nations with Global Citizen on particular environmental concerns. Natasha remarks, “I’m not a scientist, so I don’t always have all of the answers, but I love that having a platform means that I get to bring people along and help put a spotlight and a microphone on their expertise.”
Environmental advocacy is the connection that brought Bedingfield to Bedford.
“I’d been to Bedford and thought it was beautiful, but then in 2021 I was attending COP26 in Glasgow and I met Jayni Chase and her daughter Emily, and had a great connection with both of them. …One thing led to the next, and Matt and I were starting to think about where we wanted to settle down, and Jayni and Emily Chase had such amazing things to say about raising kids and living in Bedford… Emily was raving about growing up here and how the area was so full of culture, and how her connection with nature was fostered by growing up amongst it in Bedford.
I thought: I’d love to have a kid that turns out as great as Emily Chase!”
Natasha shares about her family’s experience in Bedford, “We got a place in Bedford so that we could be closer geographically to our families and to Europe and our UK place, where I have a lot of shows. I’ve been writing a lot with an incredible producer, who also lives here, called Scott Jacoby, and was another incentive for us getting a property here. He and his wife Michelle and our other friends Eric and Laura Paternot all beckoned. …And we’re settling-in very nicely, enjoying doing our place up, and are truly making the most wonderful and kind new friends. Every person we’ve come across has made us feel so welcome in this community. You know that feeling when you just know you’re in the right place? I feel like I keep having that here, with the amazing friends that I’ve made, and spending time with my family in our backyard. We discovered a pond on our property after we moved-in, and there are tons of fish – so we caught a couple last week and had our own pond-to-table moment!”
“I’ve become close with Emily Fisher, and I really admire her work. When we were shooting this Cover for Bedford & New Canaan Magazine, with Emily dangling over me on a ladder and our friend Cristi Andrews dancing around to make me laugh, and Casey arranging a flower crown above my head… I got that fantastic feeling from the creative process like my soul was laughing and having fun!” Natasha expresses “People are genuine here, have good and deep conversations, and are smart and read books! I notice everyone has such great books on their shelves! Culturally I feel like people don’t lead with ‘what do you do?’. I often have some really deep connections with people before I even find out what their profession is. And there’s so much passion and activism here in the Bedford community! It’s really beautiful to see all the locals who are working to make a change! I’ve been working with Murray and PlanItWild on my own rewilding efforts, and I’ve been talking to Karen Sabath, who I met through Bedford2030, about beekeeping, which I’m really curious to get into.”
Natasha’s songs still fill the airwaves and serve as standards at just about every bat mitzvah, sweet sixteen, and wedding. On Spotify alone, Unwritten has been streamed almost 1 billion times! It was used as the theme song for the popular show, The Hills, and this year, the song was used as a defining musical centerpiece in the movie Anyone But You, causing streaming of the song to soar in the months following the release, with over 100M streams the week of Natasha’s interview, and reaching #15 on Spotify almost two decades after the song’s initial release. …And Unwritten has been going viral on Tiktok since the start of 2021, with Natasha playing into the craze by doing funny recreations of other users’ videos to her soundtrack and interacting directly with fans.
Pocketful of Sunshine, was used in the box office hit, Easy A, with Emma Stone repeatedly opening a singing card that plays the opening line to the song – ‘I got a pocket, got a pocketful of sunshine’. “Funny enough, I heard Emma actually used the card in her audition, it wasn’t part of the original script, and the directors loved her creative license and the way she made it work, so they incorporated it into the storyline. It’s always so flattering to hear my music being featured.” Natasha smiles. “I had a pinch-me moment a few months ago singing at the Mighty Hoopla music festival, when the entire crowd of 30,000+ started loudly and enthusiastically singing along, and it was like an out-of-body kind of thing, watching that many people knowing every word to your song and all being so joyful because of it!”
Now a Bedford local, but still on the move, Natasha’s career is as busy as ever and her schedule includes frequent travel around the country and abroad to perform, record, and promote. Natasha sang at the People’s Choice Awards this year. And, a worldwide symbol of success in the music industry, and with the bonus of being so close to home, Natasha will be performing at Madison Square Garden this fall with Meghan Trainor. “Being here, and the life we’ve created in this community, the opportunities to connect with nature… it’s all such an inspiration for me to keep creating!”
And so… the rest is still Unwritten
