WASHINGTON - British singer-songwriter James Blunt’s “Back to Bedlam,” released in October 2004, sold all of 482 copies in its first week. By the end of 2005, however, Blunt’s debut had sold 2.4 million copies in England.

“That (the album’s slow start) genuinely was the plan,” Blunt says from London a few days before kicking off his first American headlining tour. “We wanted to have a gentle approach because so many record companies start talking about the importance of first-week sales, and as I understand the music industry, first-week sales is all about how much you hype up an album, and then the album seems to disappear.

“It seems much more relevant if you just put it out and see if anyone likes it, see if they tell their friends,” he adds. “Then second-week sales will be a good indicator of what’s going to happen in subsequent weeks.”

“Back to Bedlam” eventually spent nine weeks atop the British charts, thanks in great part to the delicate, inescapable single “You’re Beautiful.” The most played track on British radio last year, it has become almost as ubiquitous in America, where the album came out in October.

The United States is one of the few countries in which Blunt’s plaintive single has not topped the Hot 100 Chart: It’s currently stuck at No. 2. Blunt is managed by the same folks who handle Elton John, who has called “You’re Beautiful” a modern-day “Your Song.” One much-predicted consequence - that “You’re Beautiful” was destined to become a first-dance favorite at weddings - gained credence when Blunt was asked to play it at John’s wedding in December.

“You’re Beautiful” has also been a video hit, no doubt because of Blunt’s fragile falsetto, soulful eyes, tousled hair and - as the video winds down and he empties his pockets and takes off his shirt - well-chiseled torso. The song, inspired when Blunt exchanged glances with a former lover whom he happened upon in a London subway station with a new man, addresses the sudden recognition of failed love and closed doors: “But it’s time to face the truth/ I will never be with you.”

At the video’s end, Blunt leaps off a high cliff into the sea.

“I did it myself,” he says proudly. “When I was first going at it, they told me it was 50 feet (down). When I got there, they admitted they’d lied, it was much higher!” Blunt actually had the nerve to ask for a second take when the first didn’t look just right.

Still, given the melancholy undercurrent of “You’re Beautiful,” some viewers might see that lover’s leap as suicide.

“You don’t get to be with the girl, so what you’re saying is right,” Blunt concedes. “I leapt, but it was more a cleansing of the soul than attempted suicide. The song is about seeing someone and connecting with their eyes and for that one moment, that one millisecond in time, living your entire life with them. There’s a reality that one steps out of at the end of the song, as well, but it’s a celebration of that moment.”

These days, there are lots of moments to celebrate for Blunt, 28, who insists he always planned a music career, though he also explored a family tradition of military service dating back several generations. Born James Blount, he was educated at the exclusive Harrow School in London, went on to officer training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and then to Bristol University, where he studied aeronautical engineering before switching to sociology. A British newspaper reported that Blunt’s dissertation was titled “The Commodification of Image - Production of a Pop Idol,” which has fed into the eagerness of some critics to dismiss him as, well, a pop idol and mass-market romantic.

If so, he’s one with an unusual CV. Blunt’s college tuition was paid by the British Army in exchange for four years’ service, which is how he ended up in Kosovo in 1999. Riding a Scimitar tank, Capt. Blunt was among the first British soldiers to enter Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, ahead of 30,000 NATO troops sent for peacekeeping.

Though “Back to Bedlam” is ballad heavy, it does include a song reflecting Blunt’s experiences in Kosovo, “No Bravery.” Blunt says he wrote the song after coming across a group of Serb soldiers celebrating over the bodies of Albanian families they had just murdered (”Old men kneel and accept their fate/ Wives and daughters cut and raped/ A generation drenched in hate”).

“I was adamant it had to go on,” Blunt says, adding that “No Bravery” is “not the focal point of the album. It’s just a tenth, but it’s an important aspect and something I felt strongly about. I think I put it at the end for a reason.”

Blunt, whose mother insisted on classical lessons (recorder at age 3, violin at 5, piano at 7), opted for electric guitar at 14. And he took his guitar to Kosovo. “Wherever you are in the army, you generally take something to keep yourself amused. Some bring a pack of cards, some bring a football. I took a guitar. If we’d all taken a pack of cards, life would be very boring.”

After Kosovo, Blunt was posted in London for several years. “I was able to chose which direction and what job (I wanted), and I was fortunate enough to say I wanted to be the queen’s mounted honor guard. It was totally with a view to spending time in London, starting to play out and meeting some people in the music industry, to generally carry on and proceed in the direction I’d decided on many years beforehand.”

The London posting worked out better than Blunt could have imagined. His first performance was in 2000, at a tiny King’s Cross pub, while he was still in the army. Blunt played the London pub circuit for a couple of years before being picked up by Twenty-First Artists, Elton John’s management company.

After working on lyrics and melodies he had written while soldiering, Blunt began to record demos. That’s when the guitar that survived being strapped to a tank in Kosovo finally met its end strapped to Blunt’s back.

“I was coming out of a studio on my motorbike at one mile an hour, lost my balance and fell,” he recalls, adding, “But I looked very cool for a moment!”

In March 2003, Blunt made a pilgrimage to the annual South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin where, five minutes after he walked offstage, hit maker Linda Perry (Gwen Stefani, Pink, Christina Aguilera) signed him to her new label, Custard. Perry teamed Blunt with producer Tom Rothrock (Beck, Elliot Smith, Badly Drawn Boy), and he spent several months recording “Back to Bedlam” in Los Angeles.

The album’s first two singles, “High” and “Wise Men,” did just well enough to propel “Back to Bedlam” into the British Top 10. “At that stage I thought, ‘This is great; it’s exceeded all of my expectations,’ ” Blunt says. “When both the next single and the album went to No. 1, I was in a state of shock myself, thinking, ‘That wasn’t in the plan.’ ”

The third single, released nine months after the album, was, of course, “You’re Beautiful,” and its initial success was repeated across much of Europe and in the United States. “You’re Beautiful” has topped Billboard’s Pop 100, Top 40 and Hot Digital Songs charts.
source: Washington Post