Brit Bedingfield coasts on a wave of U.S. acclaim
John J. Moser - The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)Issue date: 6/19/08 Section: Music
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After Bedingfield conquered her native Britain with her 2004 debut album "Unwritten," it took 18 months for it to become a hit in America.
But what a hit it was: the title track was the most-played song on U.S. radio in 2006. That left her promoting it extensively in the U.S., and by the time she returned to England, her disc was more than two years old.
No worries _ her sophomore disc, "N.B.," had five Top 10 singles in the U.K. and won her the supporting position on the European leg of Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/Love Show tour.
But when it came time to release it here in January, the prolific Bedingfield says she already had written so many new songs she replaced half the disc and renamed it after the new tune "Pocketful of Sunshine."
"I'd been on the Justin Timberlake tour, I'd been inspired differently, and so I really wanted to do an album that's up to date, and from where I'm at," Bedingfield says in a phone call from a tour bus in Indianapolis.
"And that's the beauty about how the record industry is right now. It's a very fluid thing. I mean, everything goes on iTunes and you can just put the songs there as soon as you make them. You don't have to wait for a year before you can sing a new song."
It's still all good. The U.S. version of the disc hit No. 2 on Billboard's Top 200 and already had two Top 10 hits with the title track and "Love Like This," the catchy duet with teen hip-hopper Sean Kingston that topped the charts this spring.
In fact, it's done so well that a twice-delayed European tour has been scrapped for a headline jaunt in the U.S..
Bedingfield, 26, says the new material helped solidify the disc as "kind of the next stage from the last album, which is all about just starting out in life and independence and making the most of every situation."
"This next album is more about the stories and the things that happen in life _ the experiences," she says. "And so I have taken a lot of things that have happened in my life. I definitely only put songs on there that mean something personally to me. I write a lot of songs, and it's just so much more fun to sing a song that really has meaning, you know?"
But one song she left behind was the first single from "N.B.," called "I Wanna Have Your Babies," about a woman struggling to not tell men she wants to procreate.
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