"Unwritten" is about living life to the fullest, not planning everything because you never know what may happen. Each day is a blank page and it is up to you to fill it. The song conveys the idea of keeping our eyes open for all the possibilities in our life.
"Unwritten" was used as the theme song to the MTV show The Hills, which ran from 2006-2010. Joe Cuello, MTV's Vice President of Music Integration explained to Rolling Stone magazine why this song was chosen: "The song really reflected the feel of the show and we wanted to help push the career of artists like Natasha to make sure that everyone was really aware when they were watching the show who it was sung by. We tried to dovetail it all together so we featured her music video over the end credits. For us, that's a really incredible promotional tool. We see a huge response from that in terms of online and in sales. It's really gratifying years later to see that it's so inextricably tied to our show."
Natasha Bedingfield told Seventeen magazine that this song is about "just not worrying." She explained: "I really started to have dreams for myself when I was 17, but I was always afraid people were going to laugh at me. I finally just said, 'Alright. I'm going to write songs, even if they're bad. I'm just going to keep writing until I get good.'"
Natasha Bedingfield's brother Daniel Bedingfield had a string of hits at the start of the '00, and in every interview, he'd big-up his sister. His constant praising led to Natasha being whisked off to LA to work with songwriting gurus. Top stuff for her career, but it meant missing her little brother Joshua's 14th birthday. No time for a pressie, so she did what any pop star would do - penned a song for him.
"Unwritten was written with a 14-year-old in mind,"
Bedingfield told The Guardian. "At that age, you're desperate to be taken seriously, but at the same time everyone is asking what you're going to do. There's this huge pressure to map out your future."
"Unwritten" was the most-played song on US radio in 2006.
The song started going viral on TikTok after user Èsco Upp uploaded a remix in February 2021. Two months later when Bedingfield uploaded video of her dancing to the remix, the trend reached a new peak.
The song has come to mean a lot of different things to different people. Said Natasha to PopEater: "I wrote 'Unwritten' for my brother, for his 14th birthday, it was a very personal song. I feel like his life was reminding me about how people make us feel like we have to have it all figured out already. We have to already choose what college we're going to go to, what subject we're going to study, and we don't even know much about life yet. So that was a very personal story about my life, about his life, that kind of thing. It was amazing just to meet people and hear how many different people had their own parts of the song they felt meant something to them. A lot of people played it at their graduation. Other people play it at their weddings, whatever."
"Unwritten" began life as a poem, a cry for freedom from the shackles of expectation. Bedingfield then met Danielle Brisebois, a songwriter who'd seen it all - child stardom, band life with The New Radicals, the whole shebang. Together, they crafted this ode to the blank page that is every kid's future, a future waiting to be written.
"I'd been writing for a good while when I met Natasha," said Brisebois. "She lived on my couch for a few months. Then one day, Wayne Rodrigues, the songwriter who co-produced 'Unwritten,' came over and came up with the drum groove – and it just hit me. For ages, I'd wanted to write a song about how you never know what to expect from life. I'd had three different careers. I'd gone from having a ton of money to being broke and living in a garage when I was 20. I never saw Natasha's poem for her brother but I did see the word 'unwritten' on her computer. As soon as I started singing the melody, the whole thing started rolling."
The chorus was inspired by a day Brisebois couldn't afford the bus and got soaked in a downpour. Yet, she felt like the lucky one – all those folks in taxis were missing out on the simple joy of rain on their skin.
For the intro, Brisebois hummed a quirky, almost Irish drinking tune riff and her husband, Nick Lashley, played it on his acoustic guitar. "The take on the record is actually him learning it – the microphone was in the wrong place, but it sounded perfect."
Same goes for Natasha's big note at the end of the gospel section, which is straight from the demo. "We're not rerecording it," Brisebois declared at the time. "It's not quite perfect, but it has the magic!"
Talk about serendipity - Brisebois' former New Radicals bandmate Gregg Alexander originally wrote "
Murder on the Dancefloor" for their group, then gave it to Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Then, in 2024, both that song and "Unwritten" had a global resurgence.
"Unwritten" plays an important role in the 2023 rom-com Anyone But You, a modern take on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. The song plays and is sung by multiple characters throughout the film and, as the credits roll, the cast belts out the lyrics together, a playful nod to Shakespeare's festive finales. Thanks to its sync in Anyone But You, the song returned to the Top 40 of the UK Singles chart in January 2024, eventually peaking at #12.
After Anyone But You hit theaters, TikTok was flooded with videos featuring "Unwritten," capturing viewers leaving screenings in high spirits.
