- Pop singer and songwriter born in Haywards Heath, West Sussex England in 1981.
- As a teenager, Bedingfield formed a dance-pop group with her siblings called The DNA Algorithm (her brother Daniel Bedingfield had two top 15 hits in the U.S. and three #1 hits in the UK from 2001 to 2003). Their songs were up tempo with positive messages, themes that she would use in her future songwriting. After a year of college, she left school to concentrate on songwriting and vocals. At 20 years old, she wrote and recorded songs for a Christian church, and some of the songs were part of albums released by the church. Her manager arranged for a meeting with the head of a record label. The executive initially felt her songs weren’t a fit for the label, but when he heard her sing, he became excited for her potential. She was paired with a couple of staff writers as a trial, and the output by the group led to a recording contract in 2003.
- Her debut album, Unwritten, was released in 2004. It topped the UK album chart, and it peaked at #26 in the U.S. The title track reached #5 on the Hot 100 chart and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. These Words topped the UK chart and reached #17 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the US Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart. Unwritten was chosen as the theme song for the MTV reality television show The Hills in 2006, and it was the most played song on US radio that year. She received a Grammy nomination for the song.
- Her second album was released as N.B. in the UK in 2007, and a repackaged version named Pocketful of Sunshine was released in the U.S. in 2008. The title track was another hit, peaking at #5 on the Hot 100 and topping the Dance Club Songs chart. Another single, Love Like This (featuring Sean Kingston) peaked at #11 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the Dance Club Songs chart. Bedingfield released her third album in 2010 – Strip Me. It was less successful than her first albums, with the title track reaching #91 on the Hot 100.
- In 2012 she announced that she was working on a new album, but it never materialized. Instead, over the next several years she was a featured artist for singles by other artists, including Rascal Flatts and Lifehouse. She released four non-album singles from 2011 to 2017, and in 2019 she released her fourth studio album, titled Roll With Me, on an independent record label. In 2021, two singles were released that are expected to be part of a new to-be-announced album.
- Bedingfield has co-written dozens of songs for other artists, including Nick Carter, Nicki Minaj, The Coors and Brandy. Over 20 of her songs have been used in films. In 2021, Unwritten had a surge of interest when a dance challenge based on the song went viral on TikTok – one of the millions of posted videos was of Bedingfield herself doing a dance to the song. In May 2022, she released a acoustic version of Unwritten. In 2021, she competed in The Masked Singer, portraying “Pepper,” and in 2022 she was part of the The Masked Singer National Tour, performing and hosting the show.
- It’s nice to hear music about empowerment and positivity – especially in today’s negative-feeling world. Here’s her VERY positive song, Unwritten.