I have never cared whether I am cool
James Blunt is often a target for ridicule, even though his records make millions. It doesn’t get to him, he assures Ben Lawrence
‘This should be fun. We are musicians, we don’t save lives. We shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously or be revered too much’
With an arresting honesty, James Blunt tells me that he had considered recording our interview. I say that he can’t trust journalists very much. “I stopped doing interviews for a long time because the words were mine but they were in the wrong order,” says the singer-songwriter. “Context is very important – a lot of the things I say aren’t serious and so to remove the laughter does me no favours.”
This endearing frankness, of course, makes me worry that I am going to misquote Blunt, or make him sound pompous when, in fact, he is anything but. We meet in the offices of his label, Warner, and he’s a slight, unassuming figure with delicate features framed by questing blue eyes. His RP accent is crisp and precise, his vowels perhaps clipped by an institutionalised life at Harrow and then the Army, for whom he worked as a reconnaissance officer. But he is also rather playful.
“Of course,” he says. “We are in the entertainment business. This should be fun. We are musicians, we don’t save lives. We shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously or be revered that much.”
Blunt does a fine line in flippancy which has, on occasion, got him into trouble. His tweets are laced with self-deprecating humour: “If you thought 2016 was bad – I am releasing an album in 2017.” When he started out on Twitter, his handle was “@DirtyLilBlunt” until his record label intervened. “They saw what I was doing and they asked me to stop because they thought I would damage my brand. I thought, come on, what are you talking about? My brand is broken. This is who I am; it’s amusing.”
I say I am surprised that Blunt perceives his brand as broken. He is, after all, extraordinarily successful. His 2004 debut, Back to Bedlam (which included the hit single You’re Beautiful), was the best-selling album of that decade and his estimated wealth stands at £14.5 million. But he’s right in a way. The metropolitan elite who write about him in the British media have been less than kind, and his music has always had a critical mauling. This is probably because his earlier work was dominated by playlist-friendly ballads, evincing an earnestness that is markedly different from Blunt’s puckish online persona.
His new album, The Afterlove, is not exactly a departure but there is certainly more light and shade: Blunt has collaborated on it with, among others, his close friend Ed Sheeran. Nevertheless, he says, “whoever reviews my album for your paper will not be brave enough to say they like it – even if they think it’s the best album they’ve ever heard – because they are too worried about how they are going to be perceived. But I’m cool with that.”
But is he really cool with that? The opening line from Love Me Better, The Afterlove’s opening track, begins thus: “People say the meanest things. Yeah, I’ve been called a d---, I’ve been called so many things… But that… But that don’t mean it doesn’t sting.”
One from the heart? He laughs: “I’ve been called worse things than a d---, actually. It rhymes with Blunt.”
I hope, I tell him, that he is genuinely unperturbed by the naysayers who, it seems, include celebrity musicians, too. Paul Weller allegedly once said that he would “rather eat his own ----” than perform with Blunt. “It’s the same with the Gallagher brothers. I’m sure they say these things with a wry smile and then everything just gets exaggerated.”
Blunt will open for Sheeran when his US tour begins in June. The younger singer has also had to endure a fair amount of press vituperation and, indeed, the hatred of the online community whom Blunt describes as “lonely people in darkened rooms with their trousers round their ankles”.
I wonder if the pair ever discuss the potential damage this could do to their careers. “We haven’t felt the need to talk about that,” he says carefully. “Occasionally, we might comment when one of us has read something ridiculous in the media. But we’ll laugh and go for a pint. Ed has got his feet firmly on the ground.”
Another friend was Carrie Fisher, the US actress and writer who died suddenly in December at the age of just 60. They met in London through Blunt’s former girlfriend, Dixie Chassay, and, when he travelled to LA to record his first album, Fisher offered him her Beverly Hills mansion “and allowed me to call it home”. She later became godmother to his son by Sofia Wellesley whom he married in 2014.
It’s clear that Fisher’s death is still piercing: he has just written a song for the memorial service of Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, who died days later. Blunt seems uncertain as to whether he wants to talk about her.
“I don’t want to appear to be selling my record off the back of my friend,” he says. “But what I will say is that she was hysterically funny, and someone who was probably too bright for planet Earth. Life won’t be as much fun without her. She was quick with her humour – she laughed at herself and she laughed at the world. She and I had that in common, and I think that’s why we got on.”
Blunt is now 43, and besides the constant self-denigration, he possesses a sort of stiff-upper-lip maturity which indicates that he is aware of his privileged position.
“I haven’t had the difficulties in my life that other people have had. I didn’t have an unhappy childhood. There was the experience in Kosovo [when he was in the Army], but that wasn’t difficult for me, that was difficult for the Kosovans. We were doing a job.”
One thing he feels less happy with is the level of fame that has stalked him ever since he launched his pop career – though he realises he has to embrace it up to a point.
“I think I was lucky to be a little older when I became famous. But still, the shock of the world starting to treat you in a weird way… I had come from the Army, where we had deal with life or death, and suddenly people were asking whether you were cool or not. I’ve never cared whether I’m cool. “
He has, however, cared about being called posh. He only went to Harrow, he tells me, because his father was in the Army and they paid the fees.
“The UK obsesses over my poshness, but it’s never mentioned overseas. I suppose it will always follow me because I have a stupid speaking voice, but I don’t think it’s an appropriate label.”
Accusations of poshness aren’t going to be dimmed by the fact that Blunt’s wife is the daughter of the ninth Duke of Wellington, or by the news that Blunt has just bought The Fox & Pheasant, a pub near his home in Chelsea, which he saved from property developers. It’s a quixotic act, unless of course he is going to use it as a base for a UK residency.
That thought elicits a typical Blunt response. “I won’t be pulling pints, nor will I be performing there. Locals can breathe a sigh of relief.” The Afterlove is released on Friday