Each Music Monday will be formatted as followed: an overview/ my opinion on their said career, followed by the ranking of their top 5 songs. No artist is without flaws, their worst three songs will also be judged and ripped to shreds.

As a reminder, this is not going to be a series where I list no-name songs off an artist’s shitty second album that’ll you’ll hear occasionally in an urban coffee shop. We only grade hits here. I’m not looking for songs that have the best underlying message. I’m not looking for songs that represent the artist’s struggle and triumph over something shitty that happened to them. I don’t care about any of that. We are only ranking the cream of the crop, the pinnacle of an artist’s success. Before you ask, I will not be ranking The Beatle’s songs, as I do not want to tarnish my blog with overrated garbage. If you have a problem with that, or my rankings, and want to make your criticisms known, you can email all of your concerns to VinnieWontCheckThis@gmail.com. Prior versions of this series can be found here.

So with that, let’s get started.

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Natasha Anne Bedingfield was born on November 26, 1981 in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, England. Natasha’s parents raised her and her siblings around music. By their teens, Natasha, her brother, and her sister had formed an R&B-based singing group called DNA Algorithm. The group provided Bedingfield with the opportunity to explore different musical genres and expand her songwriting abilities. It didn’t last, but the experience encouraged the Bedingfield’s to keep pursuing music. Natasha went all in on a music career after one semester of college university (that’s what the losers of the Revolutionary War call it). At first, she recorded demos in the garages of friends who had recording studios, which she presented to record companies. After doing a lot of work at a local church, she was introduced to a label-head who attended masses and heard her sing in 2003. However, it was when, at a meeting together, the label-head heard her creative vocal ad-libbing combined with her singing ability first-hand that he became excited by Bedingfield’s potential. After a trial studio session together with a number of label executives present, they signed her to a recording deal on the spot and immediately got to work on a debut album. Natasha Bedingfield’s debut album, Unwritten, was released in September 2004. The album was huge in the UK, debuting at number one and eventually going platinum in the good ole US of A. In the US she had a top 5 hit (Unwritten), a top 15 (These Words), and top 20 (Single). Unwritten (the song) earned Natasha a Grammy nomination in 2006. She didn’t waste any time and began working on her second album immediately after the Grammy’s. Natasha decided to get a little weird with her second album- she decided to release two completely different albums in both the UK and the US. The UK album was called NB and the US album was called Pocketful of Sunshine. Both were released in January 2008 and I cannot get over how uncanny that is. It wasn’t like she was just unnecessarily adding the letter ‘u’ to every song title. She was recording completely different songs! Her biggest song, Pocketful of Sunshine wasn’t even released in her own country! I don’t know if she didn’t want to release the song in UK because it’s always raining there and they have no idea what sunshine is but either way it’s absolutely bizarre. That’s like McDonald’s only service g the Big Mac ™️ in Asia. Regardless, in the UK she had two songs go top 10 (I Wanna Have Your Babies, Soulmate). I don’t even know what to do with this, are these hits eligible despite never being released in US? Do they matter to me? I have no idea how to handle this because it’s such a crazy person move to release different albums in different countries but call it the same album. I need to set a precedent here- from now on to have your song be Vincluded in my rankings, the song must be released in the US and go top twenty there. We didn’t bail England out in two world wars for them to just hoard the hits for themselves. With that being said, in the country that matters the US she had a song go number 5 (Pocketful of Sunshine), and another go number 11 (Love Like This). In December 2010 she released her third album, Strip Me, which while it didn’t have any songs chart in the US or the UK, I doubt she cared, because earlier in the year she married a fucking billionaire. We didn’t get her fourth album until August 2019 when she released, Roll With Me. It didn’t have anything chart, but who even cares at this point. She was probably crying about her album flopping in her vacation home in Dubai, being fanned by giant palms while a servant feeds her grapes.

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When I decided to do my music Monday on Natasha Bedingfield, it was mainly due to my curiosity of wondering what happened to her. I have read about artists falling out of the limelight due to attitude problems, lack of ambition, and label disputes, but not once in my wildest dreams did I ever think Natasha Bedingfield dropped off the face of the earth for a decade because she exchanged her Pocketful of Sunshine for a Pocketful of Benjamin’s. I cannot even fathom all the cool shit she got to do during her 9 years away from music. Either way, Natasha had a solid 4 year run of a couple hits, so we’re going to remind you of the hits that eventually led to her never having to pay taxes again.

Toughest Omission: All I Need (ft. My Best Friend Kevin Rudolf): I can almost guarantee that nobody has ever heard of this song before. I didn’t discover it until I did this blog. It comes off her 2010 album, Strip Me. What makes this song great is that it’s a remix to Kevin Rudolf’s 2008 smash hit, Let it Rock. Give it a listen, it’s actually pretty good and I’m not just saying that because Kevin Rudolf and I are pen-pals.

5. Single: Theme song of my dating life. Don’t rub it in

4. Love Like This (ft. Sean Kingston): ironically this song never got the love it deserved. What do you think the over/under is at couples that made this their wedding song? 150?

3. These Words- she made two different music videos for this song. Why is Natasha Bedingfield acting like she’s separating church and state by giving us a US version of a music video and a UK version? It’s all the same!

2. Pocketful of Sunshine: Back before this country starting taking mental health seriously, listening to this song was how you beat depression. Hell, even know this song is probably better equipped to help you beat those demons than therapy ever could. Seriously, if you call the suicide hotline it should just be this song playing on a loop.

1. Unwritten: Natasha Bedingfield had the mid-2000s by the jugular and this song proves it. This song is the level of optimism I aspire to have. On a serious note, the choir that ends up coming in towards the end is one of the most beautiful parts of a song that I’ve ever heard.

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Here’s a fun fact- if you take one billion $1 dollar bills and put them in a stack it would measure 358,510 feet or 67.9 miles high. Conversely, if I laid the $1 bills end to end, the trail would measure 96,900 miles.

Being married to a billionaire sounds awesome. Here is a list of obscure things you can buy with $1 billion dollars (£800 million).

1. 1,000,000,000 McDoubles from McDonald’s (excluding tax)

2. 1,000,000,000 songs off of iTunes.

3. 1,000,000,000 $1 lottery scratch off tickets

4. 331,125 acres of land (Assumes an average cost of $3,020 for an acre of land

5. 3,333,333 beds (Assumes an average cost of $300 per mattress)

6. If you split the billion dollars evenly between beds and land you can buy 1,666,667 beds and 165,263 acres of land. Therefore, you can put 10 beds on every acre of land. I call it, a Natasha Bed-in-a-field.

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Your Turn

If you had a blog and were to rank every Natasha Bedingfield song that hit top 20 on the charts, what are your top 5?

Title	Year	Peak chart positions	Album
Single	2004	20	Unwritten
These Words	2004	14	Unwritten
Unwritten	2005	5	Unwritten
Love Like This	2007	11	Pocketful of Sunshine
Pocketful of Sunshine	2008	5	Pocketful of Sunshine