Changing his tune
James Blunt mixes up the music
In the early hours of the morning in the Nevada desert, James Blunt knew it was time to mix things up. Blunt and his producer Tom Rothrock were in the midst of a sea of people dancing at the Burning Man festival.
At that moment, Rothrock turned to Blunt and told him it had been an incredible journey, indicating their time together was coming to an end.
‘‘I thought ‘that is a weird thing for my producer to be saying’... then I thought ‘you know, what he probably means that if he is going to do a fifth album I needed to make it different from the last ones’,’’ says Blunt, on the phone from a press tour in Sydney.
The 43-year-old singer said he’d spent the last two years creating his latest album, The Afterlove, with Rothrock still on board.
He also revealed he taught superstar Ed Sheeran to ski in exchange for help writing songs for the album.
Blunt, who has been notoriously quiet about his private life, said it was also Sheeran who really pushed him to open up about his family.
In 2014, Blunt married Sofia Wellesley and in 2016 they had a son, whose name has never been publicly revealed.
Sheeran told Blunt he needed to write the sort of open and direct lyrics his fans had loved from the first album.
‘‘We wrote a song called Make Me Better and it made me feel really uncomfortable being quite so open, but it is a very special song,’’ said Blunt.
"My wife said it was the most romantic song Ed Sheeran has ever written her,’’ he laughs.
The former British Army officer had also worked closely with Ryan Tedder from OneRepublic, MoZella (co-writer of Miley Cyrus pop tune Wrecking Ball) and Stephan Moccio (who works with the Weeknd).
The collaborative process delivered an album he feels is special.
Blunt is happy to write songs by himself - he said the result was just him, with a guitar, sounding miserable.
As well as working hard on lyrics, Blunt and his team focused on making sure every song could stand on its own.
‘‘I think on albums now you can’t hide by having a few boring, dull songs on the end: you have got to make sure if your machine shuffles onto any song on your album it’s going to be really strong.’’
Their writing sessions delivered over a hundred songs.
Blunt’s favourite is the one that he performed alongside the Melbourne Gospel Choir at the Logie Awards at the end of April.
Don’t Give Me Those Eyes is about an illicit relationship that has to end, says Blunt.
‘‘It is like a Greek tragedy, it is really painful but it sounds special.’’
He’s worked in Australia as a judge on X-Factor, but Blunt reckons he prefers the Kiwi approach and gets on better with New Zealanders than Aussies because of their British-style humour. He’s been here four times on world tours.
‘‘Concerts with just regular people in small places are always the most intense because they are just thrilled that you should be there,’’ said Blunt.
The devoted fans were also the people Blunt thought of whenever a troll tried to bring him down on Twitter.
Although Blunt has been known for his hilarious and clever comebacks on Twitter, he admitted even he can be brought down by the nasty comments.
‘‘I think Twitter is a strange phenomenon because once upon a time we were told to keep our opinions to ourselves and if you haven’t got anything nice to say don’t say anything at all. But it is also worth remembering that that negative tweeter was probably in a dark room with his trousers round his ankles and not worth taking very seriously.’’
As for a tour, Blunt promised he would try his best to make it to New Zealand again in 2018.
‘‘I am travelling around the States, Europe and the UK and all of that will be rehearsals for when I finally get to New Zealand,’’ he says confidently.