One Liner: "Unwritten" from that Glen Powell/Sydney Sweeney movie and other pop
Poster Position: Second Quarter - Line 8.
Weekend Two Only.
Friday at 4:30
Tito's Tent (really? Weird venue)
Thoughts: Had a fun interaction with my 15 year old when the poster came out and we were looking at all of the things she loved on this poster and I was naming off the few things I could stomach. We came to Bedingfield and she had no clue who this was until I told her this was the "Unwritten" lady from that Sidney Sweeney movie and she got very excited. That movie absolutely changed the trajectory of this singer's life. I wish I knew the stream count from before that movie came out, but it is now at a whopping 1.8 BILLION streams.
Funny thing, now the YouTube video has been retitled to say "Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten (Official Video) (as featured in Anyone But You)." But, because of the movie, my kid told me this was their theme song last summer at camp for their group of friends. So, one little movie placement turns an eminently forgettable pop nugget from 2004 into a juggernaut hit in 2023. A Billboard article from 1/4/24 says it went from 511k streams a week to 1.3 million streams a week after the release of the movie and spiked on TikTok as well. If I am being entirely honest, when I heard the song in the movie, I liked it and it worked really well in the flick. But I thought it was by Nelly Furtado.
Other funny thing about that is that she had already pulled this move - get a song to be central to the plot of a hit RomCom and profit. Do you remember Easy A with Emma Stone? Well in that flick she receives card that won’t stop playing Pocket Full of Sunshine, and she decides it is the most annoying song ever. But then in the end, a mall flash mob is performing the song and the world is loving it
She was born in England to two Kiwi parents and grew up in between London and Auckland. She and her siblings formed a teen dance/electronic group called The DNA Algorithm, where Natasha sang the vocals. She went to one year of University before leaving to explore the music career. Her first work was on live albums with the Hillsong Church UK (meaning cheesy Christian tunes). When she was about 22, she signed with a label and they threw her in the lab with a pile of collaborators to create 2004's Unwritten. It sold well, hitting platinum in the UK and gold in the US. She was nominated for a few Brit Awards and a Grammy, but didn't take any hardware home.
2007's N.B. had mixed reviews and didn't get much chart traction. She got to open for Justin Timberlake though, and performed "Unwritten" at the Concert for Diana held at Wembley ten years after Princess Diana's death. Her label held off on her next album for a while because of the disappointment from the prior disc. After some heavy re-work, Pocketful of Sunshine came out in 2008, repeating six songs originally on NB, which seems bad. The title track from that is her second-biggest streamer at 646.3 million streams.
Doesn't seem like a good way to react to your boss giving you some correction, but maybe thats just me as an old man. I figured I would not know any of her other songs, but actually "Pocketful of Sunshine" sounds familiar for sure. Very Brit Pop from the 90's vibe (even though it was from 2007). "These Words" is familiar too. 2021's single "Lighthearted" sounds like she is trying to be Taylor Swift.
Her more recent albums are not good. She was "Pepper" in a 2021 season of The Masked Singer. She lives in New York. I will let the teens go and scream the hit together and see something else during this slot.
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