Cork native Stephanie Rainey opens the night with the kind of voice that requires very little introduction. She effortlessly warms up the room with a natural charm that draws the audience in and gives a hometown crowd every reason to pay attention.
Natasha Bedingfield arrives at Live at the Marquee with “Love Like This”, before “Pocketful of Sunshine” captivating the crowd with her effortless nature. Mid-song, she takes a phone from two cowboy hat adorned women who were thrilled in the audience and films from the stage, an oddly casual gesture in the middle of an enormous build. It is the first real demonstration of her vocal power: Bedingfield riffs, belts and gives her band room to flex early, while working the crowd like someone delighted to discover just how much life these songs still have. There is a certain freedom to the set. At one point, she leans fully into trip-hop territory, performing Massive Attack and Portishead covers that shift the mood of the night entirely. A bass-and-drums-led medley tears through Craig David’s “Fill Me In”, “Gotta Get Thru This”, Sade’s “Smooth Operator” and Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody”.
It should feel chaotic; instead, it offers a glimpse into the musical world that made Bedingfield. Ireland, she tells us, was the first place where things really happened for her. The affection is returned most clearly on “These Words”, when the crowd suddenly becomes electric. Extended lyrics stretch out the song’s familiar centre, turning one of the most recognisable pop singles of the 2000s into something playful and alive. Bedingfield’s greatest asset remains obvious: that voice. There is nothing careful about it. She riffs through songs and pushes notes until they crack open. Before “I Wanna Have Your Babies”, she gleefully recounts the story of the song being banned by Radio 2. The set is full of these small, strange turns: shout-outs to The Cranberries and Damien Rice; an unexpected burst of “Zombie”; A brand-new song with heavy drums has the booming, universal quality of a World Cup theme, a stadium-filling aura that felt thrilling in Cork’s Marquee. It has the booming, universal quality of a World Cup anthem or WrestleMania entrance theme.
Then comes “Wild Horses”, a huge ballad delivered with astonishing energy this late in the night. Bedingfield looks like she could comfortably do another half-hour. But there is only one place this can go. “Unwritten” remains exactly what it has become: less a song than a mass public ritual. The energy is electric, the kind that makes a song feel briefly larger than the artist who wrote it. And just when the obvious finale seems complete, Bedingfield pulls the room back into motion with a dance-party remix of “These Words”. Two decades on, Natasha Bedingfield is not here to remind anyone why these songs matter, we are fully aware they completely do.
Stephanie Rainey photos:
Natasha Bedingfield photos:
Photos & words – Celeste Burdon @celesteburdonphotography