Fifteen years ago, James Blunt released an album with the single that would make him infamous. Soon after, he'd become more infamous by getting mostly naked and jumping into a giant body of water for the video for that single. The single, of course, is "You're Beautiful." As he plunged into the frigid abyss, Blunt's debut album Back to Bedlam exploded and the subsequent mega hit became the ear worm of the decade. The album was a slow burn with an insanely long shelf life, reaching number one on charts across the world, falling just shy in America. The single "You're Beautiful," on the other hand, was unstoppable—peaking at number one in America, it spent 38 weeks on the chart total.
He received five Grammy nominations nearly two years after its release, but for a large part of the world, they don't remember the nominations or the album's other singles like "High" or "Goodbye My Lover." They don't recall the four studio albums he's released since Back to Bedlam. They do however remember the inescapable melody of "You're Beautiful" and the strangely frigid music video that ended with him disappearing into the sea. A decade and a half later, he's reappeared out of the ocean. Literally.
He's not resentful though. Where the shadow of "You're Beautiful" might have bothered a younger artist, Blunt's time since his debut album has allotted a heavy dose of perspective. "I think most musicians and bands are searching for that one big hit," Blunt says. "You know, I think The Rolling Stones are still looking and, and I'm just lucky enough to have it out there right now, at the top of my career." That's a bold claim, but it's not as curt as it sounds. He says he's fortunate to have had a single like "You're Beautiful" to kick his career off because for so many, that song is the primary reason they show up. "The benefit of that is it keeps you pretty well grounded," he says. "Someone can say, 'hey, that song is just a massive smash,' and yet, in America or in let's say, France, that's always just a myth... It means you can take nothing for granted."
He's a European success and an internet troll sniper and apparently Noel Gallagher's least favorite neighbor, but none of that is what he's known for. After all these years, he's fine being known for Back to Bedlam, and yes—he still loves "You're Beautiful."
That is, in part, why he's leveraging the single for his new work. "We've done a video for the [new] single here in the UK. That song is called 'Cold,' and it's me coming back out of the ocean wearing the same clothes I was wearing in the video for 'You're Beautiful,'" Blunt explains over the phone. "I really feel like I've made it back to shore." That feeling of rescue is one he's bringing onto his new album, Once Upon a Mind, due out October 25.
Even though there's a whole catalog of music between Bedlam and now, this album feels different for the singer. "I found it quite difficult to write as openly as honestly as I had on [Back to Bedlam] because I knew that there was an audience who are going to dissect the songs and critique it in different ways," he says. This time around though, he draws on stories about his aging father and his relatively new role as husband and father. The result is a more personal, unique sound than previous albums. "Monsters," the song Blunt wrote specifically for his father, combines piano and choir to form a deeply affecting gut punch about the end of life.
Those kind of reckonings are what made Blunt feel like he's musically back for the first time in a few years. It also made him comfortable with returning to what made him famous. When the concept for a continuation of the "You're Beautiful" video came up, his team was worried about where they'd find identical clothes. Blunt responded, "Really no need. I've actually got the same clothes. I just hung them up in a cupboard for 15 years and I believe [they're] hanging out on the left hand side."
But, that doesn't mean the success of "You're Beautiful" hasn't had its challenges. Along the way, some people have taken the success of "You're Beautiful" and the seemingly serious persona of Blunt, mashed them together, and turned him into a joke. In 2014, he literally apologized for "force-feeding" the song to people. And then came Twitter, where Blunt became a master of extinguishing trolls long before cancel culture and online attacks came to be so prominent. Working under the handle @DirtyLilBlunt, he smashed detractors with crass humor and self-deprecation.
The online persona became a brand all its own, and one that seemingly started to shake the earnest, emotional demeanor that seemed to grate on people. His team was... anxious. "They suddenly realized what I was doing and they had a bit of a panic," Blunt remembers. "I suppose it wasn't within the marketing plot of who I was or am to them." They dropped the handle, replaced it with @JamesBlunt, but they couldn't rein him in. Eventually, they admitted that Blunt had it handled. He says, "It's just a much better way of doing it because it's honest. You can get this online negativity about how shit you are. Someone hates you and you go, Whoa, this is weird how I'm dialing in on that."
So in a way, James Blunt and "You're Beautiful" and social media has all been a training ground for 2019 and the release of Once Upon a Mind. For 14 years, he's been creating music for an audience, and none have particularly had the effect of Back to Bedlam.
"Ironically, it's only when I've written songs, not for an audience, but for myself or for my nearest and dearest and it suddenly has an authenticity and an honesty that other people connect with," he says. He doesn't particularly think there's a "You're Beautiful" on this album, and that's fine. If he were trying to write that song, it wouldn't have worked anyway. Instead, he's just going to write what makes sense to him.
