Natasha Bedingfield
N.B.

THE REVIEW

After the release of the very first "Unwritten" in 2004, Bedingfield, with sincere and passionate music, found herself catapulted into the Olympus of divas. 

"What to do now that I have sold 5 million copies? Oh yes... let's release a mediocre album with five or six mega hits that sell another one or two million copies!"

Perhaps these words crossed the mind of this 25-year-old when she recorded "N.B." in 2006. To be fair, a nice CD, but it has no difference from other pop records in circulation, you might listen to songs like "Backyard" and ask yourself, "Mmh, who is it? Britney, Christina, or Jessica?" 

The album opens with a guitar solo, but just when you're about to let your guard down and enjoy this singer's new little gem, a couple of electrified sounds immediately start, making us wrinkle our noses a bit... you look back at the CD cover to see if you picked the wrong disc, and you immediately realize this dizzying change. Yes, from a simple New Zealand girl with a hippie and carefree spirit, she has transformed into one of those blue-eyed blondes who base a good part of their success on image. What a pity.

However, this opening "How Do You Do" is not completely awful, and maybe it has this effect on us because it is followed by the very delightful "I Wanna Have Your Babies" (also the first single released from the album) which makes us smile and move our heads left and right for its playful rhythm and very "cartoony" background, something you would never expect in a song.

Then the CD suddenly slows down with the advent of the third track "Soulmate" which, upon release, famous producers like Timbaland (a random nickname) didn’t think twice about calling it "One of the most memorable ballads since the beginning of the 2nd millennium"... does it really deserve such praise? I wouldn't say... yes, it's nice, catchy, but nothing so stunningly beautiful.

And neither is the following track, "Who Knows", a terrible love song that almost repeats the same rhythm and nearly exactly the same words for 3/4 times... we skip it immediately and find ourselves with "Say It Again" (which towards the end features some "uooo" and "ohyeah" from her brother Daniel, rather famous in England, a sort of nod to family fans...)

Moving forward, we find 2 tracks placed one after the other just to put the "less-better" together so as not to break the work done by those five or six good songs. We’re talking about "Pirate Bones" which does not convince even a little, and "Backyard", which we would all see well in commercials like those of Muller (surprising not to hear the phrase "Muller... do it with the flavor" at the end of the song), and the album immediately begins to lose the appeal that they try to recover with songs like "Tricky Angel", quite convincing but soon lost due to a terrible piece titled "When You Know You Know": the perfect piece to sing off-key in an unlistenable manner during a dinner for your hundred-year-old relative.

Then immediately comes the R&B/Hip-Hop note of the CD with "(No More) What Ifs", in collaboration with the famous American rapper Eve. In a similar album, let's face it, it seems put there to be discovered in a game of "Find the Intruder!"... or rather it's the immediately noticeable proof of the now instant diva sellout.

Then starts "No Givin' Up", a pro-electro piece that strangely does not turn out to be either cliché or unbearable, on the contrary, the chorus with all those "Ohohohoh" remains engraved like a fixated nail in the mind, and not bad are also the following 2 songs, "Still Here" (already heard in the soundtrack of that last wretched chapter of that wretched series of films titled "Rocky") and "Smell Roses", a hymn to happiness and optimism that, underneath, succeeds well in its intent. 

Then follows a remix of her greatest commercial success, "Unwritten" (another proof of her now hyper-commercial mind: the piece was included just as Pantene chose it to be the theme for their spot), a good "Lay Down" with which the singer performed several times in Hard Rock Cafes around the world and "Loved By You", a piece of sweet and relaxing acoustic pop.

Then follows a not very successful cover of the mythical "The Scientist" by Coldplay and another remix, this time of the track that launched her into the music universe, "These Words" (I won't add more). 

In short, a not bad album, but a little mediocre, much lower than the previous debut album.

A new Barbie? No, much better, but, alas, she is on the right track...