Natasha Bedingfield has become a “better singer” as she’s got older.
The 44-year-old singer, who rose to fame with hits like Unwritten and These Words in the early 2000s, has been releasing and performing music for over two decades now, and she’s opened up on how things have changed over the years.
She told the BBC: “[The gigs are] always slightly different and I really get a lot from the audience and the kind of back and forth and a lot of times we’ll do a cover that’s unique.
“And that’s the amazing thing about doing this for 21 years, I’m a better singer now and I don’t feel nervous – I feel at home in that environment.
“I’m quite introverted, but on stage I can be a lot more expressive and everything can be bigger.”
Referencing the lyrics to 2004’s Unwritten, which was the title track on her debut album, Natasha thinks the song sums up the appeal of her live shows.
She quipped: “When people go to my shows, they feel like they want to release their inhibitions.
“They want an experience and they want to feel like their inner child is healed.”
Unwritten was her third single, and as well as being nominated for a Grammy Award, it became her most successful single in the US while peaking at number 6 in the UK.
This weekend, Natasha is playing at the inaugural Halo Festival at Ipswich’s Trinity Park alongside the likes of The Vaccines and Two Door Cinema Club.
She’s excited to help usher in the new one-day event, which will feature big stars alongside local artists across three stages.
Reflecting on being on the festival’s first ever line-up, Natasha pondered: “You have to set the stage of how the whole [festival] is going to go, because we don’t know what the culture is yet [because it is a new festival].
“So, I guess Unwritten is kind of the perfect song for that because we don’t know what it is going to be like and it depends on who shows up.
“The crowd will say what the festival culture will be.”
Unwritten has enjoyed a revival in recent years, featuring in a large number of TikTok videos and in movies such as Anyone but You.
The pop star previously revealed that the popular track was inspired by the Beatles.
Natasha told the Guardian newspaper: “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.
“We recorded it in Venice Beach. For the verse, I had the Beatles’ Indian period in my mind.”