In August of 2004, Natasha Bedingfield released her debut project “Unwritten”. Flash forward 21 years and she has brought her fourth tour back to Washington D.C., performing her first headlining show at the 9:30 Club on the venue’s very own day, Sept. 30 (9/30).
The show began at 8:00 with opener Leanna Firestone, putting together a short thirty-minute set of songs from her previous works and tracks from her upcoming album. As the show progressed, the 9:30 Club began to get loud and the general admission floor was packed.
Bedingfield took the stage promptly at 9:00, performing three of her hits right at the jump. Following her performance of “Pocket Full of Sunshine”, she then began an unexpected mix of covers and her own music. Her performance of “Roller Skate”, the fourth song she performed, even featured the chorus of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”. The crowd loved it and everyone sang along, especially the younger people in the crowd and fans of the television series “Stranger Things”.
Following “Roller Skate” she took an impromptu break to highlight her band and to point out the time. It was 9:30 on 9/30 at the 9:30 Club!
What came next caught everyone off guard – her guitarist began to play a familiar riff, but not one that came from a Natasha Bedingfield song. She proceeded to sing the first verse of Eminem’s smash hit, “Lose Yourself”. From there, she delivered three songs off her 2019 album, Roll With Me, before unleashing a medley of covers.
From “Birds of a Feather” to “Zombie” to “Politik” to all nine minutes of “Purple Rain”, nobody knew what was coming next. Over that span, she played over twenty songs, some shortened and some not, but the highlight of the night was yet to come.
As the beat of her smash hit “Unwritten” began, the crowd let out a collective scream as we began to jump around and dance with the people around us. For most of the song, you could barely hear Bedingfield sing, with the crowd doing the work for her. Following the performance of “Unwritten”, she ended the night on the remix of “These Words”, completely switching the vibe and ending the night on an electrifying note.
When the song ended and the lights turned on, everyone poured out onto U Street, with the majority of people humming the chorus’ of her hit songs. What better way to celebrate the 9:30 Club’s holiday than with a concert of unexpected twists and turns ending with some of the biggest hits of 2000s pop music?
Image by Carter Hillsdon