Let's be blunt: Blunt's career is going fine

James Blunt
San Diego Union Tribune - United States
Heartbreak has been very good -- or at least very lucrative -- for James Blunt, the former British Army captain turned chart-topping new pop star. ...

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"Beautiful" songwriter plays an intimate half-house show at ipayOne. Tickets go on sale Saturday, Aug. 19 at 10 a.m.

Heartbreak has been very good -- or at least very lucrative -- for James Blunt, the former British Army captain turned chart-topping new pop star.

"I look forward to being dumped by a girlfriend as often as possible!" quipped Blunt.

At 28, he is already a household name in England and other parts of Europe, thanks to "You're Beautiful." The song, from Blunt's debut album, "Back to Bedlam," was inspired by a chance encounter he had on a London subway with a former flame and her new boyfriend -- a boyfriend he did not know existed.

Although Blunt's eyes met hers for only a fleeting instant, it was enough to send the struggling singer-songwriter rushing home with a creative burst. Within a matter of minutes, he recalled, "You're Beautiful" was not only born, but completed.

The third single to be released from his album, the heart-on-sleeve ballad topped the pop charts for nine weeks running last year in his homeland. It became the first single in England in a decade to debut outside the Top 10 and then reach the No. 1 spot.

Perhaps because of the universal nature of its lyrics -- And I don't think that I'll see her again / But we shared a moment that will last till the end -- the softly elegant "You're Beautiful" has become one of the most frequently played songs at both weddings and funerals in England. Its success also propelled "Back to Bedlam" to the top of the album charts, where it displaced Coldplay's "X&Y" and reigned at No. 1 for three consecutive months.

"For me, it doesn't feel like it happened very quickly," Blunt said. "I started doing music at 14, I got out of the army (more than) three years ago and my album has been out over a year. So we've been building this for a long period of time."

Blunt's military service saw him leading a reconnaissance squadron of 15 soldiers and five vehicles in war-torn Kosovo in 1999. His songs, the majority of which are easy-on-the-ear tales of love, loss and friendship, suggest such influences as early Cat Stevens, Al Stewart and James Taylor, by way of Damien Rice and Nick Drake.

But "No Bravery," the standout track on his otherwise pleasant if innocuous album, is a happy (or, rather, unhappy) exception. It paints a vivid picture of the bloody realities he encountered while on duty in the Balkans, with such grim lines as: Tracers lighting up the sky / It's another families' turn to die ... Old men kneel to accept their fate / Wives and daughters cut and raped / A generation drenched in hate.

"I wrote it in 10 minutes one day and it was very easy," said Blunt, who joined the army to pay off his college tuition and says he penned "No Bravery" while crouching next to a tank.

"It seems strange talking about anything to do with that song being 'easy,'" he added, "because everything else in Kosovo was very hard. And performing it is hard, because of the images it portrays. Those images were all there, right in front of us."

Armed with just his songs, Blunt attended the 2003 edition of South By Southwest, the annual indie music confab in Austin, where he performed for an audience of barely 30 people. One of them was former San Diegan Linda Perry, who was about to launch her own record label after writing and producing hits for Pink, Christina Aguilera and others.

Perry offered Blunt an album deal on the spot. While he admits he didn't know who she was at first, he happily accepted. "Back to Bedlam" was recorded in Los Angeles, where he stayed with actress Carrie Fisher, a friend of a friend. He recorded one song, the wistful "Goodbye My Lover," in the (apparently very large) bathroom of Fisher's Coldwater Canyon home.

"I ran out of money and I needed a decent piano, and it sounded good in Carrie's bathroom," Blunt said. "And it (the bathroom) got me back to the emotional head space of that song."