Call It What It IsCan anyone else feel the rain on your skin? Jess has the goosebumps because her good pal, Natasha Bedingfield, is joining to discuss the massive impact her hit single "Unwritten" has left.
Natasha also shares what famous royal owned her dog before she did!
Call It what it Is with Jessica Capshaw and Camille Luddington, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Hello, Hello, Hello, and welcome to another episode.
Oh what it is?
Oh, we have someone who actually has incredible pitch singing voice. No, that is not Camilla Luttington. That you hear is the other voice today. You have none other than the most I have experienced you to be an incredible mother.
I've watched you be an incredible partner.
We are in community together, and I know your friendship circle, so I know that you keep you keep really good company.
So it's so nice to be in an interview with someone I know and love. And I'm just kind of like getting goosebumps from how nice you just work to me?
Thank you lovely?
All true, all true, And we're here with none other than Natasha bedding Field. We've been also humming unwritten all morning long as we came to this podcast. And you and I share being really well known for one thing, some of this incredible music.
Hope.
I mean, I don't know, maybe it's true.
We've done so many other things and people can be like what, well, what have you? Like you're back or something, and it's like, well, no, I mean I've been working. Yeah, no, I'm really still here, yeah, still here, still being creative, and yeah, I mean it all it's amazing. But also I think too, we both have quite a young audience. Yes, yeah, it's really amazing. Yeah, I mean it's very unique.
But actually to us, yes it is, and I think that well, I'm hearing you say that it is.
It's it's not just a young audience. It's that there is.
You know, you put out work and all you can hope is that it has has teeth enough to grab someone and make them feel some kind of way, whether it was what you intended them to feel when you wrote it or sang it, produced it, or something entirely different. Right, Sometimes these songs are playing at our greatest, during some of our greatest moments, and sometimes they're playing at some of our lowest moments, and yet they mean so much to us, and they start to like, every time you hear that song, you you think of that.
Time or whatever. It is, so music is so important.
I love that you said the teeth, that it has teeth enough kind of bite, It kind of bites, and it actually resonates and it goes deeper than a little moment.
Yeah, yes, I love that. That's what I think. But you hope that we all hope that is what that is what you hope.
Now we find ourselves in situations where because of different the ways that our businesses have changed. Music industry has changed, the watching you know, content now isn't just TV or a film, it's content and the way that that's being watched has changed. And so now because of that change, your music that you wrote, you know, almost many years ago is is.
Taking on a whole new life with another generation.
So it's like all the people that heard the first time, they're still in they're still bopping down the street and they're feeling all the goosebolms from listening to your music. And now there's a whole nother level and generation the wave.
Yeah, and uh, it's it's it's wonderful. I'm being flown to England to sing for an English soccer team. That is it's like the most amazing undergo, underdog story of this soccer team that every time they win, they sing unwritten in the dressing in the changing rooms, and then they've finally they've made it into their Premier League this week, and so they're flying me there for their what's mean it's called Burnley, I'm going to root them.
Isn't that amazing? They're flying me?
Then I'm gonna and so it's it's it's awesome because you just can't expect who is gonna, who's going to connect with something that you that you make, and that who would have known it would be all these men, all these blokes.
Yeah yeah, Tish dudes. Yeah yeah. So afterwards we go out to the pub. Yeah, I take you out there and I got to go out to the pub afterwards.
What do you do you think that I mean with regards to unwritten specifically, I guess since that's what we're talking about.
What do you think it was about the lyrics? That just.
Like, I know what my answer is, but I want to know what yours is like when you were writing at the frame of mind that you were in, the was there, I don't know your songwriting process that was there a goal, an idea that was swishing around in there?
I think what spectacular is?
It really is a song that was to one person, and it was to my youngest brother, and it was really very honest and very real, and it was a time where I'd just been signed by these amazing songwriters and I was their very first artist, and we were writing all these amazing, clever songs that were hilarious, kind of like comedy writers, where we four of us would sit around a table and we were just like go free association and be as kind of wacky and crazy and stupid, and we wrote songs like these words I love you, I love you, I love you. It's just like out of this world kind of stuff. Another song called single about being single, and just very clever concepts. And then I had this very simple idea about unwritten it was and I was like, I would love to write this, and.
They were all like it's a bit too preachy.
They're like, no one's going to go for that, and so I was like, Okay, I guess this isn't the right people to write with that. But I just put the little note I had in my pocket, and when I met Danielle Brezebois, that's when I was like, this is the person I'm going to write it with. And then it wasn't trying to be something and it wasn't really like anything else.
But it was a time. But you had a direct line. I mean you had a direct line too.
You were in the in the first show. Yeah.
And Danielle is one of the most amazing people who she was a famous she was a famous actor. When she was a kid, she was in all in the family, so she was the kid in Archie Bunker's house.
Oh my gosh.
And so she went from being a child star to then being in a band, a huge band, So she had many lives and she was just one of these amazing people who'd kind of gone through a lot, and together we just made this amazing song.
And then she was a mentor for me.
She got me on camera on your phone now and she was like, and now talk to the camera. And I was super shy, and she would take me into Venice Beach and she would make me go up to people and ask them questions and interview them, and you know, so that was amazing. You know, you know when you meet someone who's been in the industry before. And it was about the pitfalls and so that was amazing. And we wrote Pocket for the Sunshine together as well later on.
A couple of years later song.
I was really lucky that.
I met her, Yeah, and the other element that was really special and that kept me very real in that song is that I was feeling a bit out of touch because I was writing with all these men and I wanted my I just felt like I needed my and so I invited my sister to come out and stay with me. And all these guys were worried that my sister would distract me, and they were made it super hard actually, and Danielle was like, no, let her have her sister out. And something about having my sister there, Nicolaye was just made me feel grounded and made me feel really honest.
Yeah.
Yeah, God, isn't that amazing how that times out?
You just kind of know that it kind of says what you wanted to say, but you don't know how it's gonna there's no way of knowing or controlling how where it's going to go.
No, you and you're putting it together for that first time.
You would have no idea just how many more times you would sing that song.
Did you have that feeling when you were in Graz Anatom that it would.
I I had the feeling pretty early on that we were doing something that felt like.
It was new.
There was a freshness and honesty and vulnerability to it.
I mean, I wasn't a.
Baby baby actress, but I still felt like I was in my nascent phases of understanding and owning showing up to work and what that meant and storytelling and preparation and all the things.
And I also felt like when I went there, I was already a fan. My expectations were myself but.
Were willing to You knew it would mean you'd have to talk about hot issues because that does already, or it was talking about difficult things right, things that were no nos ive already had that you already knew, I'm gonna have to really come to the plate.
Well, yeah, I mean this is not about me, and I see what you're doing here, Natasha, But I feel.
About me, okay, I.
Only because I know that that there are huge swaths of your audiences that are are shared between us.
There's parallels here, there really are.
I felt a huge responsibility to a community that I needed to show up in the most real and true and positive way. Like I knew what the representation could mean. I put a lot of pressure on myself. Can you tell could mean if we.
Got it right? And and I get.
I've got as you're talking like I'll show you full leg business because I hope you did.
And and you know the stories that we hear, you know from from our beloved crew, they it it has at least worked for some right and and and that means everything to me.
So I love that.
I love that that was your intention because that's what I can hear. And I think that's what the goosebumps mean is it's like really your intention behind it. It's really so pure there and that that's that feeling of means it resonates.
But it doesn't mean like right like I mean again, there's just so many of your songs, but we started with Unwritten. I mean for me that there is such a hopeful optimism to what feels like the impossible circumstance of.
Allowing yourself to be free. I think that's why.
Also we saw it come back around in anyone but you. When the song came out, it was like this incredible, just.
Auditory hug.
It was like a big warm hug for your ears and your heart and your soul.
Because you just knew what was going to happen next.
And I'm guessing that you don't get to play a set without playing Unwritten at this point.
Yeah, I have to play on Written.
It will be riots I start.
When you are out in the world singing. I mean, it's different. I've already seen you. I know the answer to this question.
You give it your all.
I have watched so many Instagram reels and see so much footage of you from all different angles, and you just go for it.
I go, I go for it. I do.
And I'm kind of seeing myself as an athlete, and I just always want to get better.
I want to always be a better singer, you know.
Yeah, And I think you learn a lot of over twenty years, Like you just learned so much, just able to kind of really articulate yourself.
And well, that's all gonna say.
So given the story of Unwritten, and then you were just saying twenty years, how do you feel like the music industry has changed since that? I mean being supported by you know, you're talking about Dan Yella and talking about, you know, being around a bunch of blokes and saying like, well, no, we don't want to distract her. She's this precious commodity in this room, and this tender twenty year old girl call that we need to and.
They hate boyfriends they hate, like when people bring their boyfriends in and the boyfriends or the family try to kind of meddle and they try to kind of separate you from that, from anyone you're close to so they can have full control. It just happens. And there you're friends too, and I say you you're kind of like, sure, that's how it goes. So I think it's what experience a lot of women have, actually, yeah, is that there's this this Bobby Doll thing where people want to kind of like this is what you should wear, Like I'm going to dress you, this is what looks good on you. But it comes with language of like, you don't look good in those colors where you like. It comes with this language of expertise where you kind of have to go, well, all right, oh whatever you think.
You know, was there a moment where you were like.
Now, yeah, yeah, I mean you don't even realize it's happening. Sometimes you have the illusion of control where you think, oh, well, no, I don't really like any of these video directors, you know, but that you have to choose right now because we're doing the video in two days, so like there's no option to kind of find another person's.
I have friends I don't know if you do too, that are performers, and I'm always in awe of them because in those situations which we do all find ourselves in, like yeah, that's true.
I have friends who will be like, well then we're not shooting it in two days. Yeah, And I'm always in all of them. Yeah, I'm sorry. Wait, I didn't know that there was an option. See, you can't do that.
You can't do that, but you will be cool to difficult women as well.
That's okay, okay.
But yeah, okay, that happens quite quick, especially twenty years ago, I think, I mean, it probably still does. But twenty years ago, it was definitely a thing that everyone was afraid of a label that.
Don't you think this is why it drives me crazy?
Yes, absolutely, still it is.
I think it's Oh, I think, I guess it probably still is. It's funny I found myself. I have a new job and we're about to start, and I want to be surrounded by people who are better than me, who are better at me than.
Other things, hopefully maybe.
I mean, I always know that I work really hard to bring what I bring to it, and I trust in that experience.
But it's funny.
Because as a as a woman, as an act, as a mother of four children, there's also parts of your life where as you know, being a mother, there's certain dates that you can't control. Like I've always run up against my kids birthdays because there's four of them on the longer and I've always gone to work and been like, these are the days I need off. And that's not even difficult to say I need my kid's birthday off. But yeah, there were times in my life where people made it up. It was presented to me that it was a real hardship. I was a problem I was giving them that I had couldn't work on this day.
But I actually also do really relate to the family one because I do feel like I I whenever it was a family thing, I used to kind of cover it over, you know, it was my family, even it was my siblings or my parents, I would always kind of like.
Pretend it something else.
Yeah she's lying, But do you like to be alone?
I do. I love it?
Yeah, you too, you too? Yeah, I love daydreaming too. I used to to write lines in school saying it will not daydream stop it. Yeah, because I was one of those daydreamy kids. Like I was like, I'm never bored.
Yeah, I know some people.
I've heard a couple of people say out loud, you know, oh gosh, I wouldn't know what to do with myself, or I you know, I'm alone because the family is going out of town this weekend and I can't go or whatever, and I'm like, I would absolutely kill for a weekend home alone with no one needing anything from me.
That's what I'm fascinated by.
How different people are and how we want different things, and now everyone thinks that we all want the same thing and tries to convince everyone that this is You're not going to be happy unless you have the if.
You unless you go to Disneyland or yeah something yeah or yeah or whatever. When you're in the car, what do you listen to?
I listen to really calming music when I'm in the car. I like to feel like I'm in a movie. So I listened to orchestras or yoga music or yeah.
So it's like a spa in your car, yeah or.
Yeah.
And I'm really into this band called Salt.
I don't know how you pronounce it s s a U l T so cool.
I love it. Yeah, and there's a girl from Portugal called Marrow. I just love it. She's so great.
I really love that. And then how do you find new music?
Just ask all my friends like, what are you listening to? And then stop following it? And then do you listen? You listen on Spotify? Yeah, you guys play on Spotify.
Girl too. Well, there's where our family's divided.
The boys and our family listen through Apple Music, okay, And I didn't know that. I thought everyone was listening on Spotify. And I canceled our Apple Music thing and it was mutiny.
They were pissed. They were like, my my son was like all of my playlists have been destroyed? What did you do to me? And I was like, oh so I would. I quickly went back, but he got on back.
You got back.
Yeah, he's got a great taste of music. I have to say, I give that to Christopher his credit, because when Luke is in the car with Christopher, he really listens to the music he wants to listen to, and so Luke kind of comes to his music. I am in the car with the girls, I think probably more often than not, and I just go along with what they want to listen to.
They're very mainstream. They're very mainstream.
It's not to say that they don't have opinions about the mainstream, but they're very much in you know, the Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams amazing, yeah, and such incredible artists.
And you know what I have to say.
I find that the girl power that's coming up in that.
Group feels very self possessed.
Yeah.
Really, they feel in control. They feel like they're saying when and where and how.
They're not afraid to say ugly things. Yes, they're not afraid to talk about real stuff. Yes, I mean Doci was talking about that.
She foughts, Yeah, you know.
Like so it makes me laugh, Yeah, it does. It's good. Literally my kryptonite. I'm gonna start laughing now.
I cannot cannot talk about parts or farting without laughing.
But like all these illusions that all generations had to have when.
We're like pretending, yes, perfect.
Pretending we never farted, we never ever ever went to the bathroom.
I can't even say it now, Like I was literally about.
To say what it is and I couldn't even say it. Yes, I know it also and and the pulling off of the mask. Right. I feel like my generation was very much like if you're gonna put them on Instagram, it's a pretty pretty picture. It's a you know, it's not this, you know, unrehearsed.
And the next generation don't want egg brushed.
Yeah everything, yeah, yea, yeah, are okay?
Alter down there on Snapchat?
Well have you ever turned your camera around on you at the wrong moment? That's it's a fucking shame spiral. I'm like, what, it's a total jump scared to me.
You are so beautiful you are. I don't even say how amazing you are.
I mean, every time I'm with you, I just I can't stop saying great stuff about you. The thing that I love is how generous you are, just like really kind to people. And I just feel it every time I'm with you. Is this like giving super power thing you have?
You know what?
I take that as a huge compliment and I am I'm grateful you feel that way.
Okay, So when do you feel like you create?
Like in your are there like spaces where you go to you go like I'm going to.
Write songs right now.
Or I'm going to journal, or like how does that work because I'm so not an original content creator. I take people's words and then I make them something, hopefully, but I've actually never been an original content creator. So what is that problem that's like for you?
So it's it's all artists way, the artist's way, like, wait.
You just write, have you done it?
I've tried.
The problem. The only problem with that.
One of the things is that it's called the Morning Pages, and you do like morning dump like you do it. The problem that I have is I'm not a morning person, so I don't have any great ideas in the morning.
I don't have any ideas at all. I have nothing. My brain is not thinking anyway.
Are you supposed to just dump?
I don't have anything to dump, Like this morning it's empty, empty, nothing.
Your thoughts are gone, very strange.
Yeah, so I have to wait a little bit to like wake up but out engine. Yeah, yes, I think exercise and yoga and those things have been really helpful for me.
And then so I just don't do the morning like. That's the thing.
I'm not not legalistic, like I don't do the Morning Pages, but I definitely do pages. You know, and you had a night I'm a night out, so I I love doing stuff at night. That's when it's like really like a live and I need to have like private spaces to do that, Like I have like a room. I have a place at my house. It's my creative room. And yeah, I just go crazy. But it's I'm very collaborative like you are. Like I love to write over zoom with people and like get someone will send me a track. Jack Harlow sent me a bunch of tracks and us like a lot of rappers send me songs and then I'll send it back and kind of go back and forward. Yeah, and then I get ideas for books and like I wrote like it was an idea for a movie. I write it down. I'm always writing things down. I'm always taking notes. And then I want to I want to write a TV show and she's like, why don't you just make it a song? So then I was like, oh, yeah, that would be a good song title. So I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm a songwriter and I want to do that first. And people do want songs, so you know, and then yeah, I mean a lot of it is collaborative and it is about people. It is like someone will come to my mind and I'll text them right away, and I'll a lot of times it's just at the right moment.
You know.
I think that I think that is very spot on.
I think in the collaborative universe, we go in and out of a lot of woo woo over here. You know, I really believe that we're so connected.
It's just yes, yes, yes, yes, I am.
I find I have a lot of thoughts in general that range from my to do list to creativity in the shower.
H shower is great.
Yeah, And then I have been known to truly just step out of the shower and be sopping wet and like reach for my phone. Drive just my right hand off enough so that the front of my iPhone will register my fingertaps.
Yes, I will write notes or I'll do like the voice.
Note thing, and then I'm like, oh, yes, I got my thoughts down.
And then I'll come back to look at them and I'll be like that was That's a different language, Like oh, and what were they thinking? How am I meant to follow the bread crumbs here?
Yeah, It's like it's like when you write a song in the middle of the night it's very hot, it doesn't make much sense.
Like I write a song in the middle of the night. I don't you do? Do you ever wake up?
In the most time, But I'm singing so quietly trying not to wake anyone, and it's like really hard to kind of make it out the next day. But sometimes I have full songs in dreams, you know. I'm like, maybe, yeah, that's the one, you know. So there's a part of songwriting that's a fit addictive, like it's like a hit, like maybe this is the next big song.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. See. I love that about you too, is that you have that optimism like anything it could be.
Yeah, I mean, as evidenced by your story of unwritten.
I mean that's truly the thing.
Is that you never know when it's coming, and and so you just keep showing up. Someone recently that I've worked with for such a long time and I were talking about this business and how it's changed and what we do and the vulnerability of it, and then how quickly you have to go back and forth between feeling very vulnerable, which would perhaps maybe lead to thoughts where you feel a little unwanted right because you're like, ooh, I want to be picked.
I want to be picked for the part. I want to be picked for the track.
I want someone to pick up the music, to start playing in different places so people will again allow it into their lives. And as we know from back, like when of our music started right and there was only radio to expose it to people, the more it's played, the more it's in your consciousness, the more you get you come to it.
Right.
So there's this, there's this back and forth between the vulnerability and like please pick me to the self possessed, empowered. I know what I'm doing, yea, I know what I'm doing, and this is my interpretation of this character and it may not be the one that gets picked, but it's mine and I'm the only one that can do it.
And I'm the only one that can write this song. And it's a really it's an interesting back and forth.
As a creative Yeah, it is. And and then but though both those sides are so important to.
The actual process.
I think, don't you The convulnerability is everyone and everyone feels that. But then the strength is kind of what we all need.
Yeah so yeah, yeah, yeah completely.
I just I think that everyone should be writing songs.
Everyone should be writing, and everyone should be singing and doing things that are because singing is your.
Your vegus nerve, your vague nerve.
That's just like it's it's regulating and it's it's like dancing where it's good for you. And I think that's why people love to go to shows, because you're singing, you're using It doesn't matter how it sounds, it's not it's not about the end result. It's not about whether you're going to be famous for it. It's just the feeling of singing feel so great with other people. The feeling of dancing feels great, you know, And those are all very human things that just bring us into a highest selves.
I think that is so well put. And it's reminding me that, I mean, I'm a little bit of a crier. I have easy access to that as as sort of like my expression of feeling. And I was at a barmeutzva over this past weekend and as soon as the canter started, I'm just crying. And I was reminded that every time I go to church, as soon as the entire congregation starts singing, I start crying. And it's they're not sad songs, they're beautiful songs. There're songs of hope they're songs of this, that or the other. Song of them are sad. But I immediately start crying, and I think it's because of what you just described. It's just this beauty, a full, primal thing that all of us can do. Clearly some of us better than others, but we It hooks us, it brings us together.
It's a belonging.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a before I go on stage, my band and I we all just do two omes and it looks so silly because it's just too just yeah oh yeah, you know, uh, but it's it's the vibration, like we kind of lock in with each other. It's like as we're looking at each other, as we're owning, you kind of just feel zing like we're together. Yeah, and we can we can do anything no matter what happens, Like if there's sound problems, if there's we're just gonna.
Yeah, just keep going in, just keep going.
Yeah.
So I feel like it's that locking in with each other that feels great.
It is because now I find you know that, as you've explained, there's so many songs that are so personal to you, and now because of social media and because of the the access that you know, we all have to each other. We're hearing the personal story, maybe even before you've heard the song. So like my my twelve year old told me all about one of Sabrina's songs and how it was about this ex boyfriend and then how he cheated on her, And I was like, how do you know all of this?
But okay, do you feel?
How do you what's your relationship with social media?
I love TikTok. I think it's really fun.
Well, TikTok loves you, so that's a good thing.
Maybe that's why I like it. I love to be loved.
Who doesn't? But I like this. I like this for you.
Okay, So TikTok I TikTok has like book talk, TikTok mental health, like it has a number of different rain talk. Yeah, it has a number of things that I can navigate through that and it doesn't have to be dance moves all the time.
Yeah yeah, I like that.
Although people have them for your song, I think I'd be very flattered by that.
Yeah, that's so cool. And I met with the kids.
You made a dance to my song that viral, and I loved how TikTok brought us together, and I loved how touched I was from just other people's lives.
Yeah, and so yeah, I love that.
Oh, I think Instagram for me, it's not my my big I haven't really conquered Instagram, to be honest.
I love them, it's like I don't get it.
We have to conquer I obviously don't get it or people don't get me on it. But but but Spotify, like you know, it's like, I don't know, there's a kind of disconnect.
With Yeah, I don't really know.
It's all different for all of Yeah, so it's.
Kind of what you really do do well on Instagram. I don't know that.
I don't know that I do well.
I don't have the bandwidth to to really understand more than one. So I've sort of glommed onto Instagram as my go to. And then and then it makes sense. I always get lost on TikTok. I don't know what's going on. I need to get better at this.
You have to train the algorithm. Like somebody show me Jax, who is a huge TikToker. She gave me lessons, so maybe I need to And she gave me like a few hours of really really good lesson she was just like really keeping it short and sweet and really training the algorithm first, training the algorithm. Just go through it and really don't like it, really like, don't like this, don't like this, don't like this. Right, and then it really figures you out really quickly, because the thing about TikTok is this loud, and as soon as you open up.
It's just like a shock to your system. And I always just used to throw my phone.
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, but once you stop, you start really telling it what you like, you start getting really it figures.
You out very so.
So if I let it know that I think that farts are funny, do you think that I would just get lots and lots of funny farts.
Yeah, Okay, I'm dumb.
Yeah, but but but the actual it's very much like Instagram too.
Yeah.
Reels, well, the reels make me laugh the hardest. I could talk to you for five thousand hours, but we have a little bit of a rapid fire here.
Real, So a little a couple of.
Questions that just like, whatever comes to your mind. First, if you had someone.
To play you in a biopic, oh, would you want it to be?
I feel like like, even though she's older than Meat, but Kate winslet.
I would love that. She's great.
Yeah, she's great.
I love that. Okay. What is something you would tell your younger self.
Wait a few years and there'll be a song that will really relate to you.
Know. I think just to lighten up. I think I was very serious as a as a teenager, I was really trying to do everything correctly, and I think I have a bit of fun would have been a good thing. Like I wasn't really light and light at that point I was.
I was.
Just really trying to be a grown up. Yeah, yeah, I get that.
One artist you would like to collaborate with, I.
Would love to collaborate with eminem.
Oh that's a good one.
I love him.
That's a good one. Okay. If your life right now had to theme song, what would it be?
That's what I'm trying to write. Yes, your theme and I've written it.
I've got a really cool song that I think is is.
That new theme song? Oh for me at least? Yeah?
I love that. Okay, Oh, I can't wait. Okay.
What's one thing that fans would be surprised to learn about you?
Well, a lot of American fans would be surprised that I'm English, because they often are quite surprised because my songs are like American songs. Yeah, and I was homeschooled.
That's something I don't think everyone knows. Yoh yeah, from eleven till seventeen.
Wow, at home with your family.
Yeah were your siblings and four kids.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah, Well, thank you, think you, Thank you so much for coming.
I love you to get thank you
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