[Tracks + Non-Guilty Pleasures] Bedingfield Edition
Do you ever come across something in the music library managing application of your choosing and think ‘When and where did this come from? And why don’t I listen to this more often?’ That’s precisely how I happened upon this week’s non-guilty pleasures. I was in the rare mood for both Biggie and Sinatra at the same time and started typing “Bedstuy” into the search bar of the music library managing application of my choosing. After stroking the d key, I glanced at the search results: my thought process went something like this: ‘I have some Daniel Bedingfield!…(pause)…I have Natasha Bedingfield as well! What great news! I need to remember to NOT tell my girlfriend about this; she’ll make fun of me ruthlessly.’
We’ve got three great pop tracks here from the Bedingfield siblings, so in the spirit of Awards Season, to figure out which is best, let’s break it down piece by piece.
•Ideal Listening Situation (Not on the Dance Floor Category): I’m not sure there is an appropriate listening situation exists for Daniel’s “Gotta Get Through This.” It features an effeminate male voice imploring himself to not think about his (would-be/has-been/never-was) lady over a rapid generic drumbeat and synth organ. I’ve been sitting here for five minutes trying to think of a situation when I would yearn to hear this song outside of the club. I guess if I was a twelve year-old boy trying to pump myself up to talk to the girl of my pubescent dreams before a middle school dance, this would be the song I want to hear.
Natasha’s “These Words (I Love You, I Love You)” on the other hand is clearly a top-down-sun-out-driving-on-a-winding-road-in-summer jam. This song was made for sing-alongs in a convertible.
As for Natasha’s “Unwritten,” I’m afraid the ideal listening situation is also engendered. The most appropriate listening situation is at a high school girl’s birthday party after the cake is eaten and all the girls want to celebrate their friendship. I haven’t been to a high school girl’s birthday party in ten years or so, but I’m pretty sure this track still fits the bill.
Winner: “These Words” (by a wide margin)
•Uses in Pop Culture: As best I can gather, there haven’t been any significant uses of “Gotta Get Through This” or “These Words.”
The clear winner is “Unwritten,” which has lived on as the theme song for MTV’s The Hills. In fact, I’d be surprised if anyone under 25 thought of the song as anything other than The Hills’ theme.
Winner: “Unwritten” (by a wide margin)
•Current Cultural Significance: It could be argued that Daniel Bedingfield helped pave the way for the Justin Timberlakes and Robin Thickes of the world, but that argument would be a bit of a stretch. What’s not a stretch is that “Gotta Get Through This” is among the first wave of laptop projects. Daniel recorded the entire thing on his personal computer using an external microphone and the program Reason. Surely, with easier access to recording equipment, the laptop project was on its way either way. But Daniel was among the pioneers, and that counts for something.
“These Words” has no current cultural significance. I hadn’t heard that song for five years before the other day. (It’s a jam, but it’s just not relevant anymore.)
“Unwritten” is again the clear winner, for it’s role as the theme for The Hills. The fucking Hills.
Winner: “Unwritten” (by a wide margin)
WAIT A SECOND…the producers are telling me something in my earpiece. OH MY, it’s a controversial ruling, but “Unwritten” has been disqualified for breaking a seldom-enforced rule, Rule 51.739d. The rule states: “A song is no longer eligible for competition if it is featured in a fake reality show set in Los Angeles with characters named ‘Audrina’ and ‘Justin Bobby.’” A controversial ruling from our judges, but I can’t argue with it. Their reason is sound.
(Speaking of which, we know The Hills is fake, so why is the dialogue so terrible between characters? We know they’re not Mensa members or anything, but surely they can deliver pre-scripted lines with feigned emotion, no? Time to replace some reality show writers, MTV.)
As such, the two categories won by “Unwritten,” – Uses in Pop Culture and Current Cultural Significance – will be scored as a Push and a victory for “Gotta Get Through This,” respectively.
•Personal Memories: My personal association with “Gotta Get Through This” is particularly strong. I went to a boarding high school, which was significantly better than it sounds. Some of my best friendships were forged there, and while not having that common place to go back to has meant that we’ve all grown apart a bit over the years, some of my fondest memories are from my junior and senior years, when my best friends and I all lived together in a small dormitory. As expected, living in a dorm of teenage boys can get a little tense; things happen that cannot be described in anyway other than “weird.”
Before my senior year, one of my best friends who shall remain nameless – if you’ve ever heard me talk about my friend with bed-wetting problems, this is the same kid – told all of us that we had to listen to “Gotta Get Through This.” It was his favorite song of the summer and he’d been listening to it on repeat. After questioning his masculinity, we didn’t pay it any mind until we got back to school. Once there, our friend played this song incessantly for months. We couldn’t go into his room without hearing this song. For this to play properly you have to understand, this kid was not soft. He was captain of the football team and after falling off a cliff before our junior season and breaking his leg and arm, he came back to play in the playoffs and was fantastic.
Fast-forward to November or thereabouts: there were five or six of us bullshitting in his room and “Gotta Get Through This” came on in a playlist. After hearing it everyday for a few months, we’d grown accustomed to this and nobody really paid it any mind. Around a minute and a half into the song, without really realizing it, we were all singing to the words, hitting the high notes, the whole deal. He had broken us down, and for the last half of “Gotta Get Through This” on that night, we all actually enjoyed the song we had been conditioned to despise over the prior months. Pop music is a funny thing sometimes.
As for my personal memories of “These Words,” it was my non-guilty pleasure when I started dating my girlfriend.
Winner: “These Words” (by a little bit)
Videos
The US video of “Gotta Get Through This” doesn’t make sense. It starts out with Daniel playing an acoustic track before the white backdrop fades away to reveal a set draped in red, with Daniel standing in an odd position, with male backup dancers. They cut to a girl here are there than Daniel’s longing for, and there scads of close-ups of Daniel singing, not looking into the camera. Out of nowhere, a fucking breakdancing battle breaks out in the studio, as Daniel remains completely calm. They cut to him looking at an enormous street painting of an angel that looks quite a bit like his girl; then the girl shows up, but she’s actually a figure of his imagination. Daniel walks back in front of the original white backdrop and the screen closes out from top and bottom.
The UK video is full of cuts to an attractive girl, to Daniel wandering, twirling aimlessly and singing on a “bridge” (clearly shot in front of a blue screen) and Daniel frantically searching for the girl at waterfronts, in train stations and various locales in London. He’s always running around, but in the cuts to him singing, he has this dumb-ass smile on his face. And in the end, he finds the girl he’s enamored with and doesn’t even lay one on her. Poor showing, Daniel, poor showing.
The US video for “These Words” features Natasha waking up and wandering through a beach town, performing the street, professing her love for boomboxes with stunted legs. It is enjoyably weird and fits the feeling of the song. She returns home to a party at her house, only instead of party-goers, it’s full of these boomboxes with stumpy legs. They jam out. I would’ve loved to have been in that pitch meeting…
Mid-level label guy:“Okay, here’s what we do: we get a bunch of dwarves to wear blue suits on everything but their legs, then we replace them in post with boomboxes who follow Natasha around and love to party at her house.”
Executive:“You just blew my mind, man. I’ll cut you the check and you make it happen…whoever cuts you the check, you’re with them, right?” (In my imagination, the executive is Rasheed Wallace.)
The UK video starts with her sitting at a table that appears to have been wired as both a turntable and keyboard. There’s no narrative in the rest of the video, but they make lots of cuts to Natash in different outfits. At the end of the video, out of nowhere, Natasha turns into a magical giant; when she crumples up a piece of paper and throws it, it becomes enormous and tramples the guy that she likes. When she draws on a maze, they guy is tied up by her ink and led to just below her balcony, where she has turned back into a normal sized person. And scene. The UK video might not make any sense, but as far as Top of the Pops-ish videos are concerned, these two combined are pretty fucking great.
Winner: “These Words”
So there we have it folks, your overall winner of The Bedingfield Challenge is “These Words (I Love You, I Love You)” by Natasha Bedingfield.
Until next time, on Non-Guilty Pleasures…
mp3: Daniel Bedingfield – Gotta Get Through This
mp3: Natasha Bedingfield – These Words (I Love You, I Love You)
mp3: Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten
