Veteran Blunt edges toward gratefulness
Two decades after You’re Beautiful made him a star, the singer is feeling reflective
J‘I’m going through the same seismic shift as I was when I was a young man’
ames Blunt has just released his seventh album Who We Used To Be. He will be 50 in February and has just marked 20 years in the music business. The You’re Beautiful singer says time has flown since that breakthrough hit made him an unlikely superstar less than three years after a six-year stint in the British armed forces. With homes in Ibiza and Switzerland he says his wife Sofia is the ‘girl of my dreams’ and they have two young children on which they dote. ‘Life is as good as it could be,’ he tells us.
‘When I first started making music, I’d write these intense songs about being a single man stepping out of the army with a dream,’ he says. ‘I had questions about who I was going to be. Some of those questions have been answered now, I’ve met the girl of my dreams, married her and started a young family. At the same time my parents are getting old, my place in the world is changing and that throws up some new questions. I’m going through the same seismic shift as I was when I was a young man starting out in the business. That’s why the album is called Who We Used To Be, it’s a nostalgic album but it’s a celebration of the successes and failures that she and I have had as a family and the battles we’ve lost.’
There are songs such as Some Kind Of Beautiful which gives lie to the fact that ‘settling down’ means the quiet life. Blunt never knowingly refused an invitation to party and is happy that being a family man doesn’t mean no to night life. In Some Kind Of Beautiful he sings ‘it’s 5 o’clock where did the night go?’
‘People ask me, “Are you going to settle down?” and I reply, “No!”,’ he says.
‘I’ve met someone who moves at the same speed as me if not faster. We live in Ibiza and we go out. I like being out at 5am still celebrating life.’
As Blunt said, the album reflects the failures as well as successes of his recent life. The Girl That Never Was is a heart-rending song about his wife suffering a miscarriage earlier in their nine-year marriage.
‘My wife and I have had ambitions and some of those we’ve achieved and others we have not. That was among the battles that we’ve lost,’ he says.
‘There is a scope I hope on the album. I write about the great moments in my life but also about when things are not good and that is cathartic. I hope that it helps people.’
Dark Thought is about his great friend, the actress Carrie Fisher, with whom he lived in LA for a time at the beginning of his career.
‘She was my best friend and I lived with her for many years. I’ve struggled to put words about her into a song since she died,’ he says.
‘It just describes a moment when I was back in LA and I drove up to her house, got out of the car and I’d just put my hand on the gate. Amusingly, at the same time one of those star map buses drove up and parked close by with a bunch of tourists. Just at the moment I was touching the gate saying, “God, I miss you Carrie”, and shedding tears. I heard the tour guide say, “On your left is the house of the late great Carrie Fisher and as you can see some fans are still deeply moved by her passing”.
‘I was just thinking, “F*** you!” but Carrie would have laughed her head off at that.’
His ripostes to some quite savage criticism on Twitter are now legendary. When a fan noticed that he has not included Ireland on his upcoming tour, he posted ‘some were grateful’. Some piled on and gleefuly concurred. I ask him why he feeds the trolls but he’s not bothered.
‘I hope people saw the humour when I said that the Irish were grateful I wasn’t coming. I meant that the Irish have very good taste in music and therefore they would rather I didn’t come; it was my joke,’ he says.
‘Hey, I know it’s a crime not to be going there and I desperately hope we can get a tour date in Ireland in there. It seems like a gaping hole in the schedule. The heart of music in Europe is probably Ireland.’
Who We Used To Be is out now.