Songoftheday 2/6/24 -I'll never know what the future brings, but I know you're here with me now...

 

 

"If You're Not The One" - Daniel Bedingfield

from the album Gotta Get Thru This (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #15 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 14

 

Today's song comes from British singer/songwriter Daniel Bedingfield, who had his DIY debut single "Gotta Get Thru This" reworked and seen it top the British singles chart and then climb to the top ten on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the autumn of 2002.  Daniel's second single in the British Isles and Down Under, "James Dean (I Wanna Know)", did decently, peaking at #4 in the United Kingdom and making the top-40 in Australia (#20), New Zealand (#23), and Ireland (#36), but in the States, while it got to #36 on the Mainstream Top-40 radio chart in January of 2003, it failed to make the Hot 100. 

For the third single Bedingfield put out the ballad "I'm You're Not The One", one he wrote that he himself didn't even like. The lyrics have Daniel as the sappy guy whose apparently in the process of being dumped, and begging for his partner to keep him around. The production by Mark Taylor is very bare-bones, which actually works to his advantage, and Bedingfield has a way with a melody, and a high tenor that boy-band fodders dream of. Yes, it's quite twee and insecure, but hey, it's relatable, and it grabbed the American audience back for another go....

"If You're Not The One" became Daniel's second and final hit on Billboard's Hot 100, reaching the top-20 in May of 2003. On the radio, the song peaked at #7 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, while rising to #17 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format and spending eleven week at #3 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") airplay list (which flocked to its gentle simplicity). The song was overhauled with dance remixes, which helped it rise to #4 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart and place at #3 on the new Dance Airplay radio list. Internationally, the song scored a second #1 hit in the UK as well as topping the Danish singles chart, while making the top ten in Ireland (#2), New Zealand (#2), Sweden (#4), Norway (#4), and Canada (#6 Sales). The record also reached the top-40 in the Netherlands (#11), Australia (#14), France (#18), Belgium (#28 Flanders), and Germany (#38). 

The fourth release from the album, the breezy John Mayer-like "I Can't Read You", went to #6 in the UK and #38 in Ireland. That was followed by another sappy love ballad, "Never Gonna Leave Your Side", which scored him a third #1 British hit, while landing in the top-40 in New Zealand (#13), Denmark (#16), the Netherlands (#17), Norway (#19), Belgium (#28 Flanders), Sweden (#29), and Australia (#30). Lastly, an attempt to veer back to the dancefloor albeit with a rock edge, "Friday", made the British top-40 at #28. Yet none of these three made any sort of dent in the American market. 

At the beginning of 2004, Bedingfield was badly hurt in an car accident in his birth home of New Zealand, which delayed the release and promotion of his second album on Polydor Records, Second First Impression, which didn't even get an American release. The lead single "Nothing Hurts Like Love", which was written by song doctor supreme Diane Warren, went to #3 in the UK and #7 in Denmark. A second try, "Wrap My Words Around You", would be his final time in the British top-40 at #12, since third single "The Way" missed the mark by one notch at #41. At this point, having recorded material that went unreleased, Daniel left Polydor to go indie.

Bedingfield returned to the charts briefly in 2008 in a rework of the song from Iranian-American DJ Sharam (one half of the Deep Dish team) called "The One", which went to #16 on the Dance Airplay chart in Billboard, and reached the top-40 internationally in France (#27) and the Netherlands (#28). In 2012, he released and EP Stop The Traffik, which included the single "Don't Write Me Off", which is pretty nice. 

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(Click below to see the rest of the post)

There was another video shot for the international single release...

Here's the remix from Passenger that led the US 12 inch single, which help the song make the dance top ten...

Bedingfield performed the song on Top Of The Pops to promote the single..

Here's the version by Sharam that made the dance chart in 2008 as "The One"...

And finally, an acoustic take from Daniel for AOL Sessions...

Up tomorrow: this R&B boyband has a steady date.