Natasha Bedingfield, from “The Hills” to “Everyone But You”
We won't leave the 2000s alive, one might say, revisiting Afterhours. Or maybe yes. Ask Natasha Bedingfield: from the theme song of MTV cult reality show “The Hills” to catchphrase on TikTokhis “Unwritten” passed through a time gap, bringing the 42-year-old British singer-songwriter back into the charts after time immemorial. Thanks to a romantic comedy that seems to come straight from the 2000s, “Everyone except you” by Will Gluck, with protagonists Sydney Sweeney (launched by “Euphoria”) e Glenn Powell (recently seen in “Top Gun: Maverick”), which ends with Bedingfield's 2004 hit: “My songs have been used in films in the past, but for 'Everyone But You' the director included 'Unwritten ' in the script in a special way.
It's a happy return for romantic comedies in cinemas and I've seen viral posts of people singing my song while jumping and dancing on their way out of cinemas. Over the years I've seen 'Unwritten' become a sing-along anthem. I adore. .To me, the sign of a good song is when everyone can sing along loudly”, she says, almost in disbelief.
The one that is worth the beauty of 84 million total streams on Spotify globally in the last month alone it is actually the third life of “Unwritten”. Yes, because the single that gave the title to the self-titled debut album by the then twenty-two year old Natasha Bedingfield in 2004, left the London neighborhood of Lewisham to find herself signing a recording contract with Epic Records in the golden years of recording, when record companies were desperately looking for the new Britney Spears and the new Justin Timberlake, at first it went totally unnoticed.
It was in 2006, two years after its release, that the song became a hit, at least for teenagers of the time, chosen as the theme song for “The Hills”: the MTV reality show, born as a spin-off of “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County”, which in turn was a reality adaptation of the series “The OC”, .it told the story of some rich young people in Los Angeles (launched the careers of Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag and Kristin Cavallari). With 3 million copies sold in the UK and US“Unwritten” – in Italy it was chosen as the soundtrack to an advert for a well-known shampoo – became firmly entrenched as one of the most recognizable hits of the 2000s.
Now we (re)discover Natasha Bedingfield, who had been missing from the UK charts since 2007 (the year in which she released “Love like this” with Sean Kingston): named one of 100 Greatest Women in Music from Vh1over the course of his twenty-year career the pop star has sold over 10 million albums, obtaining nominations at the Grammy Awards and the Brit Awards, collecting collaborations with icons ranging from Paul McCartney (with whom he recorded “Love song to the Earth”) to Sheryl Crow.
Will Gluck had used his “Pocketful of sunshine” in the Emma Stone film “Easy A” in 2010. But TikTok didn't yet exist at the time. Now “Unwritten” is not only the perfect soundtrack to the romantic but funny story like the one between Bea (played by Sweeney) and Ben (Powell), but also to the many young people who recreate the back and forth of the two actors on TikTok. Gluck had the actors sing a phrase of the text in each scene, before the final full performance: “We shot for 45-50 days and for at least 42 of these days – said the director – at the end of each scene we said: 'It's time for the song'”.