{"id":3426,"date":"2011-08-16T02:14:39","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T09:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3426"},"modified":"2011-08-16T02:14:39","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T09:14:39","slug":"james-blunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/james-blunt\/","title":{"rendered":"JAMES BLUNT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

JAMES BLUNT<\/h1>\n

Pop troubadour goes looking for trouble\u2014and discovers electricity<\/strong><\/h2>\n

James Blunt\u2019s first two albums, Back to Bedlam<\/em> and All the Lost Souls<\/em>, catapulted him to stardom with hits like \u201cYou\u2019re Beautiful\u201d and \u201c1973.\u201d Those discs also cast him in the guise of sensitive pop crooner. With his new album, Some Kind of Trouble<\/em>, the former British Army officer shakes free of his balladeer reputation and unleashes an upbeat collection of electric pop rockers. Blunt, 35, spoke with us about changing his musical direction, rediscovering the electric guitar and the impact of a famous mentor.<\/p>\n

Why is the record so upbeat?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was something that happened naturally, and something that happened more for myself than for my audience. Having made two melancholy albums, I wouldn\u2019t have enjoyed making another. I wanted to take a different perspective on life, and take a different approach musically as well. This time around I wrote on electric guitar, which is what I learned to play on. I wrote the earlier albums on an acoustic. Instead of being a troubadour, this time I wrote as if I were the frontman for a band.<\/p>\n

Was any one song a touchstone?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDangerous.\u201d I had stepped away from music and was just hanging out with friends\u2014an important thing for a songwriter to do. It\u2019s important to experience life moments, both shallow and deep. Then I met Steve Robson, who became my co-writer and producer. We went out for a beer and ended up in the studio, where we wrote \u201cDangerous.\u201d It sounded exciting and upbeat. That was the stepping stone to everything else.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve said the record captures the mood of the \u201980s. How so?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t necessarily mean the music of the \u201980s, although I can hear hints of \u201980s guitar bands in some songs. I was referring to the sense of optimism that existed in that decade. In the Western world, there was a belief we could achieve anything by working together. Since then, especially in Britain, a sense of cynicism has taken hold. I still feel\u00a0a kinship with teenage optimism. And because I come from an Army background, I recognize that \u201cno\u201d is not a useful word.<\/p>\n

Has that training come in handy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It helped me to remain levelheaded when I began to get some attention. To be thrown into an industry that\u2019s not always focused on the purity of the music, but instead sometimes on money, image and fashion, didn\u2019t come naturally to me. It took time, but I get it now, and I\u2019m relaxed about those things. I focus on what I know and love, which is to make good music.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re close to Elton John, correct?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been very lucky that he has helped me from the start. He took me out on tour and still calls me up to point me in the right direction, or to say a good word. He\u2019s been through the wars himself, and he\u2019s come out of them as an incredibly generous person. He\u2019s the first to admit he\u2019s made mistakes, but he\u2019s also learned from them. And he\u2019s still making fantastic music.<\/p>\n

Your college thesis was titled The Commodification of Image: Production of a Pop Idol<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. (laughs<\/em>) You could tell even then what I wanted for a career. But \u201cpop idol\u201d meant something different back then. It wasn\u2019t like American Idol<\/em>, which has altered people\u2019s perception of the phrase. I was fascinated by the music business\u2019s obsession with selling a brand or an image. But I was also disenchanted by that, which is why I write songs that really mean something to me. I want my songs to be open and\u00a0honest and true.<\/p>\n

\u2013Russell Hall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JAMES BLUNT Pop troubadour goes looking for trouble\u2014and discovers electricity James Blunt\u2019s first two albums, Back to Bedlam and All the Lost Souls, catapulted him to stardom with hits like \u201cYou\u2019re Beautiful\u201d and \u201c1973.\u201d Those discs also cast him in the guise of sensitive pop crooner. With his new album, Some Kind of Trouble, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[2400,1059,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3428,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions\/3428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}