As anyone who follows him on social media will know, James Blunt is a master of self-deprecation. He begins his riotously entertaining new memoir Loosely Based on a Made-Up Story – a title that presumably allows for the odd dramatic embellishment – by referring to himself as a “one-hit wonder”.
It’s a wry nod to the once-grating ubiquity of his signature song, 2005’s ‘You’re Beautiful’, but also too modest by half. After all, one-hit wonders don’t release the UK’s 18th biggest-selling album of all time – the previous year’s ‘Back To Bedlam’ – or fill arenas nearly 20 years later. Blunt is the one-hit wonder who’s having the last laugh.
Blunt’s new album ‘Who We Used To Be’, the seventh of his durable career, is filled with soft rock bops that shimmer like the Ibizan sun. He’s called the Balearic island home for many years, and you can hear echoes of its clubby pulse on the percolating lead single ‘Beside You’. The album also contains disarmingly poignant moments like ‘Dark Thought’, a heartfelt tribute to the late Carrie Fisher. As Blunt recalls in the book, the Star Wars icon was an incredibly formative figure in his life. Before he became famous, she put him up in her L.A. compound, where he recorded his hit ballad ‘Goodbye My Lover’ in her bathroom.
Back in his inescapable phase, ‘Back To Bedlam’ was named Worst Album at the 2006 NME Awards. Now, 17 years later at his publicist’s office in central London, Blunt laments the fact that he was never invited to the ceremony or sent his statuette. So today, we’re righting the wrong – and catching Blunt off guard – by belatedly giving him his gong on camera. “I’m deeply, deeply touched – thank you so much,” he says graciously. “That’s going beside every other award and will probably be the one I’m most proud of.”
It’s a typically good-humoured response from a man who has proven himself one of the great characters in British pop. Whether you want ‘You’re Beautiful’ played at your wedding or not, it’s hard to deny that Blunty’s presence makes things more fun. That’s definitely true of this interview, in which he’s pithy, playful and yes, a little bit self-deprecating.
A couple of songs on the album – ‘Some Kind Of Beautiful’ and ‘Beside You’ – are quite dancey in a way people might not expect. Are they inspired by living in Ibiza and going to clubs like Amnesia?
“I mean, I know I’m famous for [writing] dreary songs on guitar, but I live in Ibiza and I love dance music. And also, I suppose I’m writing songs about my wife – the person I’ve aspired to be with all my life. And so rather than writing a song about a second in time of seeing a girl on a subway, the song about the person you’re with [for good] has to be bigger than that. It has to be a bigger statement, so that’s why they’re upbeat and fun songs.”
Did you have to think twice about writing a song with the word ‘beautiful’ in the title?
“Definitely, because legally I’m obliged not to use the word anymore, aren’t I?”
There are some amazing tales of clubbing in Ibiza in your book, but can you still do that very often now you’re a dad?
“Yeah, I’m high on babysitters. I mean, I love clubbing and I built one at the end of my garden. I played in Ushuaïa, Amnesia is one of my favourite clubs in the world, and I wrote a song about Pasha called ‘1973’, which is the year it opened. Pete Tong remixed [that song] and played it when he had a residency there, so it’s definitely in my blood.”
What’s the door policy for the club at the end of your garden?
“You can get in, definitely. I have a mannequin on the door whose name is Svetlana, and she has a clipboard with my mates’ names on it. I’ll put yours on there, too.”
The song ‘Dark Thought’ is about Carrie Fisher, who was a hugely important figure in your life. Why was now the right time to write it?
“It must be about seven years since she died, I’m not entirely sure, but it’s taken me all of that time to write a song for her. As a songwriter, the most honest song is normally the easiest to write because it just flows out of you. But I’ve been overthinking this song for so many years because she’s just such an incredible human being. And so what I did with the song is I just described the moment I went back looking for her after her death. I went back to her house on a whim, drove up to her gate, and put my hand on it just to feel a little bit of her there. And I wrote the song about that moment.
“Ironically, as I did that and shed a tear, an open-top van full of tourists pulled up outside the house. And the tour guide said: ‘On your left, you’ll see the late, great Carrie Fisher’s house. And as you can see, some fans are still deeply moved by her passing.’ And that was me.”
Carrie Fisher also features very prominently in your book. What made you want to write it now?
“You know, I left the Army in 2002. I think I got signed in 2003 and put my [first] album out in 2004, so it’s been 20 years in the business, really. Which seems like a good time [in] that hopefully I won’t get into trouble for the things that I’ve written. But at the same time, I can’t leave it another 20 years because otherwise the people in the book – you know, myself and Jedward – will no longer be relevant. So that’s probably why now is the time.”
Do you have to contact people to tell them they’re going to be in the book?
“Most of the civilians I have.”
But not Jedward?
“No… You know, as they are in the book, they are the heroes of the moment. So I don’t think I need to alert them because they come out shining, whereas me and my friends don’t. I think I’m the fall guy in most of the stories.”
How important do you think your sense of humour has been to your career? It definitely seems to have changed people’s perceptions of you, at least in this country.
“You know, I put out quite serious, earnest music, but I’m not a very serious person. And I think what I struggled with at the beginning of my career is that I would talk about the music in a serious way, and then be asked more tabloid-type questions and make a joke about them. But then the journalist would never put the ‘haha’ in the article, so the jokes came across as very serious or just weird.
“And then I guess people thought, ‘Wow, this guy’s just earnest and odd.’ And that was a bit of a struggle. But then with social media, the clown that I am was revealed. But yeah, it’s hugely important for me, because, you know, this is a silly business based on such pretension on the whole. I don’t think it’s worth taking myself too seriously in this business, because if you do, you’ll only get knocked down at some stage.”
Who do you think that you were treated as such a punching bag in the early days?
“You know, I was really, really naive. And I’d come from this very protected organisation of the army and boarding school before that. And I think other people who’ve come from a tougher experience probably just felt like saying: ‘Fuck you, you’ve had it easy.’ And in some respects, I have had some things easy, absolutely. And as I say in the book, looking back at certain interviews and certain ways I responded – my jokes, just the way I was – occasionally I looked myself and thought, ‘You know, I’d punch myself in the face.'”
In the book you describe yourself as a “national pariah”. But in the press release for your new album, you’re described – presumably by someone else – as “something of a national treasure”. Do you feel like a bit of both?
“I am slightly embarrassed that they should have said that in any way. Because I certainly don’t think it’s true in any way. But I think we’ve come full circle, you and me, and we’re good. The NME and me, we’re friends now.”
James Blunt’s ‘Who We Used To Be’ and book Loosely Based on a Made-Up Story are out now
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