It is, says James Blunt, the first night of his Greatest Hit tour. The crowd cheers. “That’s ‘hit’ singular,” he adds. “I’m going to play You’re Beautiful 22 times.”
This is, of course, very on brand for James Blunt these days. His vast mid-00s success came with equally vast accompanying opprobrium – perhaps inevitable when an unnecessarily handsome Eton and Sandhurst alumnus shifts 11m copies of his ballad-heavy debut album, with sales driven by Radio 2. But Blunt has proved exceptionally adept at owning his role in popular culture. His witty, self-deprecating tweets are renowned. As Neil Young removed his music from Spotify, Blunt threatened to add more of his, for example, and similar stuff fills the gaps between songs tonight.
It’s at odds with the intensity of his performances – which occasionally extends to singing with fists clenched. But Blunt can afford to laugh at himself. One running gag involves his career tailing off since his debut album, Back to Bedlam, but its successors have shifted another nine million copies between them. On the evidence of tonight’s set, they have taken musical detours into areas just as uncool and reviled as Blunt once was, including Mumford & Sons-y pop-folk (Bonfire Heart) and ukulele-driven Ed Sheeran-isms (Postcards). Clearly he knows his audience.
Some of it is as beige as detractors suggest but some is built robustly enough to cut through prejudices: Love Under Pressure’s house piano; Same Mistake’s Coldplay-ish stadium-rousing. His voice is an acquired taste – the cut-glass intonation occasionally suggests an impassioned love ballad being sung by the cad in a Boulting Brothers film – but it would be churlish to say that Monsters, about his ailing father, doesn’t pack an emotional punch, or that 1973, imbued with something of the Balearic spirit of Ibiza, where Blunt lives, isn’t really well-turned.
Moreover, he appears to have attracted a new audience. Among the middle-aged couples lurk a noticeable contingent of early-twentysomethings, presumably fuelled by some combination of his online presence and memories of childhood car journeys soundtracked by Back to Bedlam. “You’re beautiful James!” cries one male voice; “I also love you, James!” answers another. They’re doing that thing where you pretend you’re at a gig ironically – but they’ve bought tickets and are singing along, raising the question of who the joke’s on. When Blunt dons a gas mask and runs into the crowd midway through an unexpected cover of Slade’s Coz I Luv You, one of them blocks his way, arms outstretched. Blunt literally leaps on to him, his legs wrapping around the fan’s waist, a man who fully understands on which side his bread is buttered.
