Review: Natasha Bedingfield brings party vibe to Cork's Marquee

You know it’s going to be a party gig when the singer asks the crowd to wave their hands up in the air before they’ve even started singing, and that was the case with Natasha Bedingfield last Thursday night Live at the Marquee.

 Her accomplished and experienced career to date means she clearly knows exactly how to both read and work the crowd.

Everyone in the crowd knew she had one particular mega hit in her setlist, and younger voices were heard requesting Unwritten immediately after her first song Love Like This, which she originally released with Sean Kingston.

She went straight into Pocketful of Sunshine, which has over 650m listens on Spotify, a reminder that Natasha Bedingfield is certainly no one-hit wonder.

Throughout her whole set she was not afraid to throw in snippets and lyrics from other songs, as well as performing entire cover songs, some of which included Glorybox by Portishead, Ain’t No Body by Chaka Khan, Smooth Operator by Sade and a particularly well-received take on The Cranberries’s Zombie. 

All those songs have little in common in terms of musical genre, but are of course are all performed by female artists.

Celebrating those women as well as celebrating in general was the running theme of the night, she even managed the holy grail of playing as yet unreleased songs such as Foreign Language without the audience rushing to the bathroom. Going to the other end of her career she also made a point of thanking the Irish audience for always supporting her, and noting that it was in Ireland she had her very first hit single, ironically called Single.

Released 22 years ago, it was older than a good proportion of the night’s audience, many of whom have become aware of her songs These Words and Unwritten from Tik Tok trends and featuring on soundtracks. When Natasha started These Words, the rush from people in the seats to join the standing crowd was noticeable, as was the surge of phone screens becoming visible.

Of course when ‘that song’ was finally played the stitching on the Marquee’s roof was well and truly stressed testing from both the roar of approval once the intro of the song started and then for the iconic “Feel the rain on your skin / No one else can feel it for you” chorus.

All in all, Natasha Bedingfield managed a multi-faceted show to appeal to multiple generations and turn into one big, excited happy group.