Amazing Radio’s Ruth Barnes played Natalie’s song ‘America’ on her show. Natalie was initially inspired to write the song after a controversial discussion on an online US political forum came to her notice. The discussion was about public execution, and contributors of the forum were discussing whether it was ethically and politically acceptable for the families of murder victims to witness the execution of the murderers via closed circuit TV.
As Natalie read on she noticed that some of the forum’s contributors had started discussing the idea of actually making executions public in the USA, not only to be witnessed by the victims’ families, but broadcast live on national television and streamed live over the internet.
As political practice and legislation in the USA is recognised as being among the world’s best, being fair, ethical and humanitarian, Natalie wanted to contrast this with the fact that in the USA capital punishment is still practised, hence she writes “murder is the law”. She also wanted to turn the idea of a ‘public execution’ into a metaphor for the way the public and media treat celebrity.
Her song ‘America’ was three quarters finished when she sat down with Sir Paul McCartney in a one-to-one songwriting masterclass. She played him the song and explained that she was in the process of writing a bridge section. Sir Paul picked up his guitar and began to strum along, and he came up with the chord structure for the bridge of the song. Later Natalie finished writing the lyrics, and so completed the song. The lyrics are neither opinion nor argument say’s Natalie, they are merely observation.