British-New Zealand singer Daniel Bedingfield is on the comeback trail. He’s currently embarking on his first tour of the UK since 2005.
Besides performing new and old material, he is also treating audiences to some insights into his life. At a show on Tuesday at the London Palladium, he dropped hints that he may not be 100% straight.
Before launching into the song “Borderline”, Bedingfield said, “In my era, you had to be gay or straight, or f*** you. I wrote this song with a man I loved about a girl we both loved.”
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If he just said the second sentence, one might think he was talking about a platonic male friend. However, the first sentence suggests Bedingfield is making some allusion to his sexuality.
“Borderline” is not listed on any discography, so we’re guessing it’s a new track.
Gotta Get Thru This
Bedingfield (the older brother of fellow hitmaker Natasha Bedingfield) scored massive success with his debut album, Gotta Get Thru This, released in 2002. It spawned the single of the same name and the ballad, “If You’re Not The One”. They both charted in the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100.
However, he struggled to follow up the success of his first album. Then, in 2004, he suffered a horrendous car accident whilst visiting his parents in New Zealand. It left him with serious head and neck injuries which took months to recover from.
Bedingfield basically withdrew from the music industry in the mid-00s and relocated to Los Angeles.
“I did the pop star thing from nine years old till 24, I really was very focused and then I had a car crash and I suddenly realized the first memory when I woke up is I’d like to try something very different,” he recently told ITV show, Loose Women.
“I’ve done farming … homesteading, like chickens and bees and fruit trees and food, forests and ecological stuff, you know, regenerative stuff.”
“If you keep manifesting what you know, you’re just going to keep living what you’ve had”, so he thought he should “rest completely”.
Bedingfield has also talked about living with autism and mental health challenges.
Current tour
In January, he announced his current tour to mark over 20 years since the release of Gotta Get Thru This.
The tour kicked off Sunday at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on Sunday. However, on Instagram, some reviews of the first night were scathing.
“Absolutely devastated,” said one audience member. “Loved you for years, album after album but you didn’t read the room and left after an hour after joking all night that you were planning to leave early and didn’t want to sing any of your old songs. Please rethink for tomorrow’s show. I left alongside a very disappointed crowd. Your support was happier to be there than you were. So, so disappointed in the attitude on stage.”
The comment was liked and agreed by others in attendance.
Perhaps Bedingfield simply experienced first-night issues or changed things for the next show. Reviews from his Monday night concert in Birmingham and Tuesday in London were far more positive.
Bedingfield says he hopes to put out a new album soon and has “20 years of songs to release.”
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