A record contract remained elusive, with recording label executives pointing to Blunt's posh speaking voice as a barrier in class-divided Britain. Shortly after leaving the army, he was signed to EMI music publishers and Twenty-First Artists management.
It was at that period that he started using the stage name "Blunt", in part to make it easier for others to spell "Blount" is pronounced the same way, and remains his legal surname. Interland told HitQuarters that he listened to Blunt's demo while driving home and after hearing the track "Goodbye My Lover", pulled over and called the mobile number written on the CD to set up a meeting.īlunt left the British Army in 2002 so that he could pursue his musical career. A backing vocalist and songwriting collaborator suggested he contact Elton John's manager Todd Interland, with whom she used to share a house.
While still in the army, he worked on demos during his time off. Blunt trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He stated on an interview in his Back to Bedlam sessions that he chose to join the military as his father was "pushing for it, so that could obtain a secure work placement and income". At University of Bristol, his undergraduate thesis was The Commodification of Image – Production of a Pop Idol one of his main references for the thesis was sociologist and rock critic, Simon Frith, chairman of the Mercury Music Prize panel of judges since 1992.īecause the British Army sponsored his university education, Blunt was obliged to serve a minimum of four years in the armed forces. There, he was introduced to the guitar by a fellow student, and started playing the instrument and writing songs at age 14. I’ve never been a big fan of James Blunt and while I appreciate that lots of people are, he wouldn’t be close to the top 20 otherwise, he’s just not for me.Blunt had piano and violin lessons as a child, but his first significant exposure to popular music was at Harrow School. Blunt’s voice is just slightly too distinctive to make this work as a relaxing background album, something Dido and David Gray have in their favour, instead it just isn’t as easy of a listen as it should be. There’s glimmers of some talent in here, the emotion heard in Goodbye My Lover for instance, but it never quite pans out how I wanted it to. I probably complain a bit too much about ‘nice’ music, saying that it’s boring or tedious, but sometimes ‘nice’ just isn’t enough. It’s probably the best track here, the rest just plods along being ‘nice’.
Things get a bit more Coldplay on Out Of My Mind, while opener High takes this to a new extreme it could easily have appeared on Parachutes.
With follow up single Goodbye My Lover being along the same lines, my hopes weren’t high to enjoy the full Back To Bedlam album. Everyone reading this knows the song, it was a radio smash that never seemed to go away. Said big hit is of course You’re Beautiful, a sickly sweet ballad that manages to sound heartfelt and creepy at the same time. The ‘soldier with the beautiful voice’ story was all you heard throughout his promo in 2005, the typical lead in to one of the millions of plays the big hit would have received on UK radio that year. It’s easy to see why people would be bored of someone like James Blunt, he’s the blueprint for a Simon Cowell ‘success story’. I’ve never managed to hide how I feel about certain artists, Blunt being one of them. Completing the boring trinity of this list, Dido and David Gray if you aren’t keeping track, we have James Blunt.