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Daniel Bedingfield Biography
The crass proverb tells us that
one never gets a second chance to make a first impression.
In most instances, that phrase contains a grain of truth.
But what if that weren't always the case? What if it was possible
to innovate, adapt, develop and expand on those first impressions,
and offer something at once entirely new and wholly familiar?
What if there were a performer whose music made it impossible
not to reassess whatever your initial first impressions of
that performer might have been? Enough of the what-ifs. 23-year-old
Daniel Bedingfield is that performer. And he's learned all
too well in the last year that when life's rare second chances
come along they must be grasped with both hands. Bedingfield
was born in New Zealand then raised by social worker parents
in South East London. By age six he was writing songs, by
age nine rapping along to a boombox at school, and by age
sixteen was composing on his first keyboard. When he was eighteen,
Daniel wrote the song that would change everything. A song
of self-belief, frustration and the first pangs of young love,
'Gotta Get Thru This' sat unopened for months in A&R-man bins
around London. Indeed the track, with its overwhelming and
innovative garage sound was still being widely ignored when
garage hotshot EZ plucked one of Daniel's self-pressed twelve
inch singles for inclusion on the compilation album 'Pure
Garage 4'. Almost instantly, the track blew up everywhere
from Brixton to Ayia Napa and propelled Daniel straight to
number one in the UK charts. Not bad for a song recorded in
Daniel's bedroom with one computer and one microphone. Eventually
signing to Polydor, Daniel unveiled an astonishingly diverse
debut album, mixing frenetic drum'n'bass and hugely understated
classic balladry with funk, soul, ragga and pop. Daniel's
emerging talent combined traditional song writing flair with
some impressively sophisticated production know how. Impossible
to second-guess, the album covered so many styles, tempos
and influences that it immediately had the ring of a career-encompassing
greatest hits collection - and, to be fair, by the time Daniel
had finished unveiling singles, it wasn't far off. In the
end the album sprouted six singles - 'Gotta Get Thru This',
'James Dean', 'If You're Not The One', 'I Can't Read You',
'Never Gonna Leave Your Side' and 'Friday'. Among these were
five Top 10 hits - including three UK Number Ones. To date
the album has sold 1.7 million in the UK and 2.9 million worldwide
(650,000 in the US). "I've always known since I was nine years
old that I would be doing this," Daniel said in one of the
many Stateside interviews published in 2003, as he watched
his album catch the imagination of the American public. "Whatever
happens, I'm ready for it." But in reality nobody could have
been prepared for what really happened next. On January 2nd
2004 Daniel was cut from the wreckage of his jeep near Auckland,
New Zealand. The roof of the jeep had broken Daniel's neck,
and he would have a metal frame bolted into his skull for
three months. While the fashion world briefly considered the
role of the neckbrace in 2004 catwalk chic, Daniel began a
physically and mentally draining course of physiotherapy.
One unlikely benefit to come from the accident was that Daniel's
pace of life slowed down for the first time in two years.
After the transition from bedroom-dwelling zero to chart-topping
hero, Daniel's head had already been spinning. "Before the
accident it seemed as if whatever I was doing, I was five
steps ahead of myself," Daniel remembers. "It was hard to
keep my head above water. And now… Well, now I'm just really
enjoying life. I have a sense - which I know some people only
experience far later in life - that I know who I am. And I'm
comfortable." These changes in Daniel's outlook have made
an understandable impact on his music. Though some of the
songs on Daniel's second album 'Second First Impression' date
back to those days recording in a bedroom, others ooze a new
confidence and self-belief, a result of Daniel's production
partnership with LA producer Jack Joseph Puig, a veteran whose
credits include idiosyncratic and unique talents like Beck,
The Rolling Stones, No Doubt, Weezer and The Black Crowes.
"Puig", an impressed Daniel says, "has the whole world in
his head at one time". "Communication was vital to the album",
Daniel says. "We had continued and extended conversations
about how to retain an essence of what made my music me."
To this end the sounds crafted around many of the songs are
based on Daniel's own home demos; other tracks were built
from Daniel's own primitive beatbox accompaniments and some
even retain those percussion effects on the finished CD. Like
its predecessor, 'Second First Impression' also made some
bold - and from the outside, seemingly reckless - lyrical
commitments. "I love putting out really vulnerable music that
could just bite me on the ass," Daniel laughs. "There's stuff
in my music that I'd literally never tell my closest friend,
and yet somehow it just feels right to put it into a song
and tell the entire planet. It takes something that is ugly
within yourself, some base instinct, or a pain that is really
deep and you, and then it permits all that to enter the public
consciousness. For me it's an almost spiritual experience.
Most music these days has lost its power. Music has lost its
force, its meaning, its direction. I wasn't going to let that
happen to me. I feel the album reaches some places the last
one didn't and that maybe my songwriting jumped forward with
'The Way' and 'Sorry'. I would never have been able to write
those songs before." Daniel will have an opportunity to showcase
the songs live this spring when he takes to the road on another
full-scale UK tour, and he's promising a back-to-basics approach.
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