Top of the pops in Britain but a Kiwi at heart

By STEPHEN JEWELL

After his first single, Gotta Get Thru This, reached number one in Britain, 22-year-old Daniel Bedingfield became the first New Zealander since Crowded House and OMC to make a major impact in the British charts. However, considering that Bedingfield was just three months old when he and his family first moved from New Zealand to England, his link to this country could be described as tenuous at best.

Not so, says Bedingfield, who ensured that he fitted in a visit to his grandmother during a lightning trip to Auckland to promote his debut album, which is also titled Gotta Get Thru This.

"I have a New Zealand passport; my grandparents and parents are Kiwis; I support the All Blacks; drink Lion Red and Monteiths," says Bedingfield, sitting back on the bed of his five-star hotel room.

"I'm very Kiwi. I keep coming back each year and I really don't want to lose that heritage."

But how is New Zealand reflected in Bedingfield's music?

"I would say in the desire to do something different," he says. "Not make an album like most people would make after a garage hit. They'd make a garage album. I'd like to one day pioneer and do some breakthrough stuff.

"I'm a big fan of the Finns, of Che-Fu and OMC. And I actually wrote Inflate My Ego about a girl from Mission Bay, and I bought the CD that I got the sample from - Peter Gunn from The Blues Brothers soundtrack - in Queen Street about three years ago."

After moving to Britain, the Bedingfields settled in the predominantly black south London suburb of Brixton, where Daniel's parents were social workers.

"It's a pretty rough area," says Bedingfield. "But it was good because our parents were really friendly and they always said that our home is open to all. They loved homeless people and drug addicts and they really supported them. We'd see that happening around us as we grew up, so we learned not to judge people and to value human life."

Brixton also boasts a thriving club scene with leading dance artists such as Basement Jaxx, Roots Manuva and garage dons So Solid Crew hailing either from the area itself or surrounding suburbs like Camberwell and Vauxhall.

"Brixton has got a great nightlife," says Bedingfield. "There's such a massive influence of different cultures melted together. Have you managed to hear my album yet? It's nuts, isn't it? It's all over the place. It's Sting, Michael Jackson and all this crazy stuff thrown together."

Bedingfield's rise to fame has been meteoric. Only a year ago he was just another struggling musician whose life changed forever after he wrote Gotta Get Thru This.

"I was walking over Tower Bridge from work, desperate to see this girl, and Gotta Get Thru This just came to me," he says. "I sat down at the computer and put it all on there. Stuck it on a vinyl, gave it to EZ, the best DJ I could think of, he put it on his compilation, Pure Garage 4, and then it goes to No 1. It's been massively rapid, from being a nobody to having a No 1. I just found out that it's top five in America."

Like Gotta Get Thru This, Bedingfield's new single James Dean (I Wanna Know) is an annoyingly catchy, poppy garage tune. But Bedingfield's album also boasts a number of soulful, r&b ballads that bring to mind Michael Jackson and fellow garage crooner Craig David.

"I got into garage because that was what was happening in the clubs at the time. I'm also influenced by Michael Jackson's early material as well as the Beatles and Bob Dylan."

In James Dean, Bedingfield suggests that he could be the music scene's equivalent of the late rebel without a cause, although he says he is only comparing his admittedly handsome physique to Dean and is not alluding to his tragic fate.

"Sometimes a girl says you're such a good boyfriend but she doesn't really fancy you, which really pisses you off," says Bedingfield. "I could be James Dean or Brad Pitt but if the girl I want doesn't fancy me then I might as well be Ozzie!'

* The album Gotta Get Thru This is released late this month.