Some things just can’t be unheard, which is something I’ve recently discovered with Natasha Bedingfield’s pop hit from 2004, “Unwritten”. The song was virtually inescapable in the mid-2000s, becoming one of the most-played songs in the U.S. in 2006. After hearing that song on every VH1 roundup, radio station, and commercial for an entire year straight, I would believe that stat without even looking it up (but it is true). The song was an infectious, feel-good bop that had everyone singing about feeling the rain on their skin. “No one else can feel it for you.”
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Not to say that Bedingfield’s hit was the most singular song ever created, but “Unwritten” did feel so firmly planted in the mid-2000s that I would have never considered the older influences that helped inform it. Two decades after she released her debut album, Bedingfield spoke to The Guardian about how The Beatles and her younger brother, Joshua, helped inspire the track.
“For the verse, I had the Beatles’ Indian period in mind,” Bedingfield explained. And indeed, with the tinny guitar and Eastern harmonic structure, it’s hard not to hear it as a perfect blend of George Harrison and Paul McCartney. “I am unwritten, can’t read my mind, I’m undefined.” Can you not hear them harmonizing on that?
How Natasha Bedingfield’s Younger Sibling Inspired “Unwritten”
If you take any little factoid away from this story, let it be that the Bedingfield kids seem to have a really heartwarming way of supporting and uplifting each other both personally and professionally. During the same 2024 interview with The Guardian, the “Unwritten” singer recalled her older brother, Daniel Bedingfield (of “Gotta Get Thru This” fame), constantly pushing her name. “Bless him,” Natasha said. “He’d go, ‘Listen to my sister. She’s great, too!’ It helped me get a foot in the door.”
Natasha then returned the favor with her and Daniel’s younger brother, Joshua. After she had to miss Joshua’s birthday while she was working in Los Angeles, Natasha decided to write her sibling a song as a part-apology, part-birthday gift.
“At that age, you’re desperate to be taken seriously,” she told The Guardian. “But at the same time, everyone is asking what you’re going to do. There’s this huge pressure to map out your future. ‘Unwritten’ started as a poem. Then I found the right songwriter in Danielle Brisebois, who’d had amazing experiences as a child actor and in the band New Radicals. She helped me with the idea that every child is a blank page and can write their own future.”
With the context of The Beatles’ Indian period now in the mix, “Unwritten” seems like the mid-2000s “Hey Jude”, if the primary Fab Four songwriters were Paul and George, not Paul and John—right down to the emotionally rousing vocal outro.
Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images
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