James Blunt

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James Blunt
James Blunt performing in Seattle, Washington in April 2006.
Background information
Born	February 22, 1974 (age 33)
Origin	Tidworth, Wiltshire, England
Genre(s)	Pop rock Alternative Folk rock
Years active	2004–present
Label(s)	Warner/Atlantic/Custard
Website	JamesBlunt.com

James Blunt (born James Hillier Blount, 22 February 1974) is a Brit Award winning English singer-songwriter whose debut album, Back to Bedlam, and single releases — especially the number one hit "You're Beautiful" — brought him to fame in 2005. His style is a mix of pop, rock, folk and adult contemporary. Along with vocals, Blunt plays a wide variety of instruments including the piano, guitar, organ, marimba, and mellotron. He is signed to Linda Perry's American label Custard, and became the first British artist to top the American singles chart in nearly a decade when his song "You're Beautiful" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2006. The last British artist to do so had been Elton John in 1997 with the song "Candle in the Wind".

Contents 1 Early life 2 Singing career 3 Reactions to success 3.1 Parodies and References 4 Discography 4.1 Albums 4.2 Hit singles 5 Reviews 6 Awards 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

[edit] Early life

Blunt was born in Tidworth, Wiltshire, England in 1974 and educated at Elstree School, Woolhampton, then Harrow School. From Harrow School he gained an army sponsored place at Bristol University, before finally completing his education at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Blunt's father was in the British Army Air Corps, and his family has a long history of military service. The Blunt family is also known to have owned and restored Cley windmill. ^[1]

Blunt was then a commissioned officer in the Life Guards regiment, a unit of the Household Cavalry of the British Army. He rose to the rank of Captain and served as an armoured reconnaissance officer in the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo, and was among 30,000 troops into Pristina as the first British officer to enter the Kosovan capital.^[2] It was while on duty in Kosovo that he wrote his song "No Bravery". He also stood guard at the coffin of the Queen Mother during the days of her lying in State and was part of the funeral procession on April 9, 2002.^[3][4]

[edit] Singing career

Within a year of leaving the army, Blunt signed to EMI Music Publishing as a singer/songwriter. He soon caught the eye of former 4 Non Blondes singer Linda Perry, who had written and produced songs for P!nk, Courtney Love and Christina Aguilera. Perry signed him to her new US-based Custard Records label, and Blunt recorded his album in Los Angeles with producer Tom Rothrock at Rothrock's home studio, Embassy studios^[5] while lodging with actress Carrie Fisher.^[6]

James Blunt's debut single, by "soft release" in the UK was "High" (co-written with Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue). This song peaked below the Top 100 of the UK Singles Chart. However, the song was chosen to appear in a Vodafone commercial in Italy, and as a result was a Top 10 hit in that country. His second single, "Wisemen", this time properly commercially available, peaked at #44, and sent the album into the UK's Top 20 chart. A support slot on Elton John's 2004 tour followed. Blunt's third single "You're Beautiful" was his breakout hit. The song debuted at #12 in the UK, and demonstrated a rare trend of upward mobility on the UK charts, rising all the way to the #1 position six weeks after its debut. The song also received massive airplay in the UK, which helped propel Back To Bedlam to #1 on the albums chart, unseating the record-breaking album X&Y by Coldplay from the pole position. After the success of "You're Beautiful" in the UK, the song crossed over to mainland Europe, becoming one of the biggest hits of summer 2005 across the continent. In the USA, "You're Beautiful" made its debut in the summer of 2005 on WPLJ, a prominent radio station in New York City, despite not having been released to radio yet. Once the song was released to radio stations in the Autumn of 2005, the song climbed into the Top 10 at three radio formats: Adult Contemporary, Adult Top 40, and Adult Alternative, eventually climbing to number 1 on the Hot 100.

The videos for all of Blunt's singles to date feature symbolism and dark imagery. In the first video for "High", he is buried in a desert. In the first video for "Wisemen", he is kidnapped and taken hostage. In the video for "You're Beautiful", he alludes to suicide by jumping off a cliff into the sea. The re-release video for "High" then features Blunt running in a forest. The re-release video for "Wisemen" has Blunt burning identification papers, and then walking through a forest while he is on fire. And in "Goodbye My Lover" he is singing while clips of a man and woman (played by Matt Dallas of "Kyle XY" and Mischa Barton of "The O.C.") kissing and cuddling are flashed up every few seconds.

On 3 December 2005, he was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. His music has been featured on television programmes throughout the world. He made his acting debut on the (US) ABC Family Channel programme Wildfire, first aired on January 30, 2006. He also appeared in episode 103 of the CBS comedy Love Monkey (original air date February 7, 2006) . He was interviewed and performed "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover" on the Oprah Winfrey Show on March 8, 2006 (taped on February 21, 2006).

In 2005, he performed 90 live shows, mainly across the UK and Europe, ending the year supporting Jason Mraz in a North American tour. The "Back to Bedlam World Tour" started off in Europe in early January 2006, moving through the UK in February, and then progressing to his first full headlining tour in North America starting in March. In April, Blunt performed several dates in Australia, New Zealand and Japan before returning to North America for May, and then starting another UK/European tour in June and July. October and November saw the return of Blunt to North America.^[7][8] In addition to the songs from the "Back to Bedlam" album, Blunt has included several cover songs, including "Where Is My Mind?" and "Breakfast in America". Blunt has also performed several unrecorded original works in live performances.

[edit] Reactions to success

Blunt initially had little investment from both the independent record label he was signed to, Custard Records, or from his distributors Atlantic Records. Although trading standards authorities forced him to add an explicit lyrics warning to the packaging of his debut album, critics of Blunt have cited 'inoffensive' songs and vast marketing investment as reason to see him more in the mould of a commercial act rather than a genuine singer-songwriter. In 2006, the name James Blunt was entered into the Dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang (a 'right James Blunt') referring to the word "cunt". Blunt is said to have responded, "John F. Kennedy got an airport named after him - I got my favorite part of the female anatomy".^[9]

On May 29, 2006, the British press reported that a local radio station Essex FM had announced that it had banned all songs by Blunt from being played, after listeners of the station repeatedly called and said they were "fed up with them". The station stopped playing the hit single "You're Beautiful" after having it on constant rotation for 14 months. They played Blunt's single "Wisemen" 26 times the next week.^[10]. In April 2006, Guy Garvey, lead singer of British band Elbow said in an interview with the Britsound radio show that if "James Blunt dictates our musical image abroad, it’s as heinous a crime as Hugh Grant representing us abroad. This kind of foppish, English twit image that he exports in all those bloody awful movies that he’s in, really gets on my wick just because of the idea it gives people about the British. So, yeah, James Blunt is music’s Hugh Grant. Nothing to do with the reality of the country I live in." ^[11]

A survey conducted this year reported that Blunt was the fourth most annoying thing in the UK, beaten only by cold callers, queue-jumpers and caravans.^[12]

According to The Sun, "You're Beautiful" has eclipsed Robbie Williams' "Angels" as the wedding favourite in the United Kingdom. In the same article, "Goodbye My Lover" was revealed to be a funeral favourite as well, with two high profile funerals in Canada using the song in memorials for Laval police officer Valerie Gignac and Toronto teenager Jane Creba.^[13][14]

[edit] Parodies and References

• Jon Culshaw parodied Blunt on Dead Ringers in a spoof called "It's Bloody Cold".^[15]
• Nicole Parker (wearing a prosthetic male chest in order to impersonate the shirtless Blunt) performed a spoof called "I'm Beautiful" for MADtv.^[16]
• Mitch Benn performed a song called "I May Just Have to Murder James Blunt" in his show "Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music" on June 27th
• "Weird Al" Yankovic composed and recorded a parody of "You're Beautiful" entitled "You're Pitiful," intended for release on his twelfth album. Yankovic had done so with permission from Blunt himself. However Blunt's label, Atlantic Records, chose to forbid Yankovic from releasing his parody. Yankovic removed the song from his album to avoid conflict with the record label, and in June of 2006 posted it as a free download on his own website.^[17]

[edit] Discography

[edit] Albums

• 2004: Back to Bedlam
• 2006: Chasing Time: The Bedlam Sessions (DVD/CD)

[edit] Hit singles