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 James Blunt is a British musician 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 jazz, Northern soul, pop and soft rock. 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. James Blunt’s family have served in one kind of army or another since 995A.D. A long line of warriors. Savages really. Not a musical bone in any one of their bodies. The only music he heard growing up was “Happy Birthday” and “Silent Night”. His father considered all music, even classical, to be unnecessary noise. Although James was not one to rock the family boat, he didn’t really think he was going to join the army – it sort of crept up on him. Plus his family didn’t have a boat. Aged fourteen he just held the teenage conviction that he would have an interesting life – maybe that’s why he picked the guitar? Then again, maybe if he hadn’t, he would have tripped over it. He went to University and studied Aerospace Manufacturing Engineering and Sociology, spending most lectures asleep on the floor at the back. In much the same way, he ended up in the army. In essence, one day he was sleeping off a hangover at the back of a sociology lecture hall and the next thing he knew he was in Kosovo with a gun and a guitar strapped to the side of a tank, wondering who he could possibly sleep with to get out of this war. To break up the super attenuated monotony, James would sometimes stroll through Serb villages wearing an East German cap singing, “All we are saying is give peace a chance”. “We were peace-keepers at that point,” he explained, shrugging helplessly. So how did the music get into him, you might ask? Well if you were sent to boarding school aged seven, studied Engineering by mistake (“I thought we were going to fly planes, but we just pulled metals apart – the brochure was very misleading.”), joined the army by default, guarded The Queen, buried The Queen Mother and pranced around London like a tit for Japanese tourists to photograph, what you’re going to want to do very much after that, besides getting stoned and laid, is put your gun down, pick up a guitar and make an album in America with Linda Perry. So James came to Los Angeles in September 2003 to record with Tom Rothrock et al. At night he’d go to bars, bringing with him his valuable British accent (in the U.K., too posh for some people – in LA, the best thing she’d heard all night) and the fact that like 50 Cent he’d been shot at numerous times, but unlike the Cent, had dodged the bullets. One song, “Goodbye My Lover”, was recorded in his landladies’ bathroom (“She was a frequenter of mental hospitals and in general, a freak – but pleasant”) where, naturally, she kept a piano. From birth in a military hospital in Tidworth, to Harrow School, to Aerospace Manufacturing Engineering, to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, to The Household Cavalry, to Kosovo, to Buckingham Palace, to a recording studio in Los Angeles. How did James get from there to here? Only James Blunt’s hairdresser knows for certain, and either he isn’t talking or James cuts his own hair, and it’s up to you to join the dots – there are ten of them on the album. Awards 2005 – MTV Europe Music Awards- Best New Act 2005 – Q Awards - Best New Act 2005 – Digital Music Awards - Best Pop Act 2006 – NRJ Music Awards (France) - Best International Newcomer 2006 – Brit Awards - Best pop act, Best Male 2006 – ECHO Awards (Germany) - Best International Newcomer Discography Albums Back To Bedlam — 11 October 2004 #1 UK (9x Platinum); #2 US (Platinum) (US Sales: 1,248,590); #1 AUS (4 x Platinum); #1 NZ ( 5x Platinum); #1 Portugal (2 x Platinum); #1 Canada (Platinum) Chasing Time: The Bedlam Sessions Live DVD with Bonus live CD - 13 February 2006 #1 UK (Music DVD chart) #1 Australia (Music DVD chart) #1 Italy (Music DVD Chart) Global Sales: 8 million [1] Singles From Back To Bedlam: "High" - 18 October 2004, #148 UK; #3 Italy; #3 Taiwan; #10 Latvia "Wisemen" - 7 March 2005, #44 UK "You're Beautiful" - 30 May 2005, #1 UK; #1 US; #1 Canada; #1 Argentina; #1 Belgium; #1 China; #1 Ireland; #1 Latvia; #1 Netherlands; #1 Norway; #1 Portugal; #1 Poland;#1 Sweden; #1 Taiwan; #1 Australia; #2 Germany; #2 Switzerland; #3 Slovakia; #4 New Zealand; #5 Denmark; #5 France; #6 Austria "High" - re-released 3 October 2005, #13 UK, #16 Austria, #22 Germany "Goodbye My Lover" - 19 December 2005, #9 UK; #66 US; #1 Sweden; #3 Australia, #3 Latvia; #6 France; #7 Netherlands; #9 Greece; #19 Norway; #25 Slovakia "Wisemen" - re-released 13 March 2006, #23 UK; #1 Czech Republic; #29 New Zealand; #77 Canada Trivia In one of Blunt's songs I Really Want You there is a line that goes "I killed a man in a far away land/ My enemy, I'm told." Some have interpreted this to suggest that while posted to Kosovo he killed enemy soldiers. The song No Bravery was written after Blunt claims he came across Serbian 'soldiers' celebrating over the dead bodies of an Albanian family they had just slaughtered. This is story is questionable as all the Yugoslav Army forces were obliged to withdraw from the province before the entry of NATO occupiers. 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 Montreal police officer Valerie Gignac and Toronto teenager Jane Creba |
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