When asked to pull up a lyric from his new album, Who We Used to Be, that sums up its ethos, James Blunt’s response is telling. He cites a starry-eyed verse from “Some Kind of Beautiful,” with references to winging through Elysia, shots in the dark and nights that never end. The kicker line: “Heaven’s a place where the lines get crossed.”
“It just feels spontaneous and exciting,” the singer/songwriter we all know for 2004’s “You’re Beautiful,” and its album, Back to Bedlam, tells GRAMMY.com. More than that, it’s reflective of a sea change in his artistry 19 years on — the self-proclaimed past purveyor of “selfish songs about myself” is actively singing outside of himself.
“The questions of life are about not just whether I'll be all right,” says the now-husband and father, ”but whether my children will be all right, the passing of time and how it goes so quickly and that fear that you'll miss out on that time with them.”
Every song on Who We Used to Be is permeated with this empathetic energy; another key line for him comes from “Glow”: "I hope that this night never ends," he wishes aloud. “It's just that thing — life moves pretty fast,” Blunt says. And it certainly did in the Back to Bedlam days — and he feels lucky to still have a fruitful career, with a renewed label deal under his belt.
Read on for an interview with the five-time GRAMMY nominee about how Who We Used to Be came to be, his memories of the mid-2000s music business, and the self-proclaimed irony of putting out a Greatest Hits release. (“I always joke it should be called Greatest Hit and Songs I Wish You Heard,” he cracks.)
This interview has been edited for clarity.
What was the initial creative spark that led to Who We Used to Be?
I think I'm just at a stage of my life where I've got a ton of different things going on, and that was what I was just going to write about is just the things that were inspiring me at the moment.
And once upon a time, I was this young man with a dream to be a musician with so many questions of whether I would achieve that ambition, that dream. Who would I be? Where would I go? Who would I meet? Those kind of things.
I've reached this stage in my life where lots of those questions have been answered. I've met the person I hope to live with for the rest of my life and married her and started a family. And I've been in the music business now for a little while, so I can feel pretty safe about that as a job.
All the questions I had when I was an aspiring musician, many of them have been answered. But at the same time, I've been thrown a ton of new questions. My parents are getting old, and they need looking after. Instead of them looking after me when I was a child, it's my turn to look after them.
My position in the world is changing, because I'm a family man, in charge of a family. Having kids raises these questions. And also there are moments of celebration and moments of sadness along the journey.
I've been in the business now for 20 years. I've lost some friends… obviously, you write about those losses along the way, and lost some battles along the way. But fundamentally, it's also an album of celebration.
If I'm the guy who wrote “You’re Beautiful” about a girl I saw in a subway for one second, then having met the girl who I'm hoping to spend the rest of my days with, the songs better have bigger statements than just saying “You’re beautiful” to her.
So, that's why this album's got great celebratory songs saying "All the love that I ever needed/ I got it from you," as an example. Oh, “I heard there's a song that God only knows and it's keeping me dancing beside you/ Nobody here knows how the melody goes, but it's keeping me dancing beside you.”
That's kind of the idea: just to capture where I'm at now, with its highs and with its lows.
What would you tell that guy who wrote “You’re Beautiful” if you could?
Don't take the blue pill. [Chuckles.] I don't know. I mean, that the same rules apply as now as when you're starting out, which are: follow your instinct. Don't be pushed into following what other people think is best for you, necessarily, particularly when it comes to art and music.
So whilst I have a beautiful relationship with my record label [Atlantic Records, since 2003], and I'm very lucky to be with them, sometimes, when you just go on your own journey, that's what makes things stand out.
How did starting a family change your perspective on art and the world?
Well, I used to write selfish songs about myself — about what was going on in my mind. Now, I write songs with other people in my mind, instead — of people who are more important than me to me.
The questions of life are about not just whether I'll be all right, but whether my children will be all right, the passing of time and how it goes so quickly and that fear that you'll miss out on that time with them.
So, there's a song on this album called “Glow,” and it just says, "I hope that this night never ends." It's just that thing — life moves pretty fast. Yeah so that would be it really, just thinking about other people, songs about other people rather than just about myself.
Build a bridge from that song to another in the tracklisting. Give me another one that takes you out of yourself.
Well, pretty much all of them, I would think. “Saving a Life” is about someone else and the struggle that they have. As a friend to that person, it seems like the answer is so obvious. The way out of the struggle is so easy, but if that person doesn't want that kind of help, then it's not for you to help them.
It's a frustrating feeling. And everyone has that kind of friend who is either in financial difficulty or is in relationship difficulty or has a problem with addiction. You want to help them. But there's an ocean between you, and you can't.
The obvious other song on this album is a song called “Dark Thought” for Carrie Fisher, which it took me just a number of years to actually dive into — 2016. So it's taken me a while to write.
*James Blunt. Photo: Michael Clement*
How did this translate to the music itself? How did it come to reflect that sense of empathy?
I don't think I necessarily thought that the two had to go hand in hand. Each song has got a different idea, a different subject. And with that, every production has been just in keeping with the song, rather than anything else.
What do you remember about building up these songs, and imbuing each with its own character?
Once upon a time, I would get in a studio for maybe four months with a producer like Tom Rothrock, who did my first albums. And we would just bury ourselves to make a body of work that was all interrelated and connected, recorded at the same time, in the same way, with the same musicians. There was a great beauty to that.
I've spoken to him about, "I missed that. I haven't done that with this album." More recently, what I do is I write a song with the guys that I'm in with. We produce it then and there. And there are pros and cons to doing that.
The con is that you don't craft that song as often and as much as I'd like. Sometimes, we want to go back in and change a lyric and it seems annoying. I have to go and see someone in Copenhagen when I just want to change one lyric, one word.
And then, at the same time, the problem I've had sometimes with albums that I've crafted over a long period of time is they lose their spontaneity. You have demo-itis; people will go, "Oh my God. I love the demo." And then you can just smooth off all the edges.
So, by writing a song and recording a song then and there, it keeps its excitement. It keeps that freshness of a fresh idea.
How did you and your accompanists jointly craft the sound of the record, the way you wanted it to strike the listener?
With everything I do, I just know that the more honest it is, the less considered, the less pretentious, the more genuine, then the more the audience will all connect to it. People can really hear that in me.
So, each song has a different production on it, because each song deserves a different kind of production. I just know to not overthink it, but just to enjoy and feel it.
How would you compare recordmaking and album cycles in 2023 to back when you got started?
It's a faster turnover. It's, sometimes, less considered. It's got this kind of organic spontaneity, which is great fun. If I had my way, I think I'd probably prefer to go and sit in a studio and do it over a decent few months. But sometimes, life moves pretty fast.
Back then, how did your relationships change when you skyrocketed to global fame?
Well, they say fame changes you, but they're wrong. Fame changes everybody else.\
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You walk down the street, and suddenly, when you get famous, everyone on the street behaves really strangely towards you. They all want a selfie and say "Hello," and they can just respond differently. And so you kind of react to that. In the long term, you have to adapt to that.
But for me, I'm an English guy who was in the Army, who went to a boarding school. Sent away to boarding school when I was 7. I was very, very independent. But when the madness of the music business took hold, that's when I called my parents. I hadn't really seen them since I was 7 years old, not properly. I've just left home at that stage. And then I called them up.
And I've always joked that my parents never saw me again. They put me into boarding school and never saw me again until I was famous. But the real truth is I called them when I got famous saying, "I really need support. I really need my family around me.”
When I've been spoiled — behaved like a trumped up little pop-star — they'd smack me down and tell me to act like a normal human being.
And my friends, of course, from whether it be the army or from school or from university, if I was struggling with the press, I could call someone in the army and they'd say, "You think you're having it hardcore. So-and-so's leg has just been blown off here in Afghanistan." That kind of would put things in perspective.
So, my close friends, and my family, have always been the same throughout that time, and I'm very grateful to them. Because I think they're the ones who've kept me a grounded, normal human being.
I think what I was really lucky about is, I got into this business fairly late. I had a proper job. I was 28 when I got in the business. They always talk about young people who get in the business early. There's always that thing. You never grow older than the age you get famous. So, if Michael Jackson got famous at whatever age, he never grew up beyond that age.
And you can see a lot of young people who go into the music business, they don't have a chance then to mature as adults anymore. And I was just lucky to have got in when I was older.
Now that you’ve broken into this fresh emotional territory, what do you feel is next for you?
My Greatest Hits was released a couple of years ago. That was the end of my record deal. And then, fortunately for me, my record label called up and said, "We'd love to sign you up to a new deal."
Now, as you can imagine, the greatest hits, presumably, has all your best songs on it. So all these next songs that I'm releasing now or releasing in the future, none of them are going to be on my greatest hits. It already exists. So these songs are all just gravy. These are all bonus tracks in my life. So I'm just having great fun. I'm kind of liberated by the experience.
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