Send "Natasha Bedingfield " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Rollingstone |
| Slantmagazine |
| Strip Me, the sort-of provocative title for Natasha Bedingfield third U.S. release, suggests that the singer might have incorporated the tawdry style of Katy Perry and Ke$ha into her brand of sunny pop, but the album is yet another iteration of TashBed's increasingly grating up-with-people shtick. Not that pop needs another starlet trying to out-whore her contemporaries, but Strip Me is so single-minded in its uplifting, inspirational tone that it raises questions as to whether or not Bedingfield can really do anything else. To the singer's credit, she's smart enough to know that, if she's not updating the content of her songs to even the slightest degree, she needs to work with a relevant team of producers if she's going to continue to have any chance of making a dent on the pop charts. Which, alas, means that Strip Me includes a whole lot of Ryan Tedder's trademark echo-heavy, CAPSLOCK drum-machine arrangements. There's something meta about the laziness in the production of the title track, in that Bedingfield hasn't changed her tune since the days of "Unwritten," so Tedder gives the song only the most insignificant of variations on his "Halo" and "Already Gone" template. Bedingfield uses her raspy warble to full effect, singing lines like "I'm only one voice in a million/But you ain't takin' that from me" as though her very life depended on it, but it's nothing that either she or Tedder haven't already done better before. The same can be said of Kleerup, who brings a steely, electronic chill to "Break Thru," but the slightness of the arrangement makes for a poor approximation of his progressive, forward-thinking work with Robyn. John Shanks's production on "All I Need" more or less takes the rapid BPM approach he brought to Bedingfield's "Pocketful of Sunshine" and applies it to a sample of Kevin Rudolf's "Let It Rock." It isn't that the production on Strip Me is bad per se, it's that Bedingfield lacks either the commercial clout or the artistic cachet to command these producers' best material. It makes for an album that sounds phoned in and at least a couple of years behind the curve....full text |
| 411mania |
| Natasha Bedingfield has always been an artist with whom you would associate well written, well produced, radio friendly sing-a-long pop tunes. Largely inoffensive and occasionally brilliant, she has, thus far, achieved reasonable success on both sides of the Atlantic. With Strip Me though, it’s all about North America and cracking the US market in a big way. Melancholy doesn’t appear to be a word in Bedingfield’s vocabulary. Strip Me is shamelessly upbeat from the off, and, at times, you would be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled upon a motivational speech set to music. It is full to bursting with positivity, heartening and uplifting lyrics, pulsating euro-dance beats and those giant choruses that Natasha loves to bellow so much. The serendipitous “Touch” for example, is a schmaltzy Hollywood rom-com of a track reminding us that everything happens for a reason and even the most embarrassing moment could lead to ever-lasting happiness. Before reaching for the sick bucket, it is worth knowing that it is actually a fairly solid pop tune, borrowing liberally from late 80’s U2 and infused with a compulsive dance beat the likes of which David Guetta has been striving to produce all year. For this US only release, Bedingfield has gathered together a veritable who’s who of quality producers, including John Shanks, Julian Bunetta (who worked with her on mega-hit “These Words”) and sometimes Robyn collaborator, Kleerup. This attention to detail shows as the production is of a high standard throughout. So much so that Bedingfield sounds entirely at home, even when venturing delicately out of her comfort zone, into arena-friendly dance tracks, such as “All I Need”. To be fair, the occasional dipping of her toe into the dance music pool are the only times you feel she is taking anything resembling a risk in Strip Me, but the optimism is infectious and there is a real feel-good glow emanating from within the album. Lead single, the Ryan Tedder penned title track, “Strip Me” in particular is a straight pop “Independent Woman” for the iPhone generation....full text |
Natasha Bedingfield lyrics
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