James Blunt

Description

At the end of 2021, James Blunt released a greatest hits album. "Or as I like to call it — The Greatest Hit And Songs I Wish You'd Heard," he says, which, as anyone who follows his X/Twitter account will tell you, is a very James Blunt thing to say: it's self-deprecating, funny, and predicated on the recurrent gag that the only James Blunt song anyone knows or cares about is his multi-platinum 2005 single 'You're Beautiful.'

In fact, the greatest hits album (it was called The Stars Beneath My Feet, for the avoidance of doubt) rounded up the first 17 years of a career that feels extraordinary by anyone's standards. He was an artist who appeared to come out of nowhere — the first gig James Blunt ever attended was the first gig James Blunt ever performed, shortly after leaving the army in 2002 — and immediately released the biggest-selling album of the decade: Back To Bedlam shifted over 12 million copies.

James later released a further succession of hit albums, every one of them a Top Ten hit, and — contrary to the recurrent gag about 'You're Beautiful' — a brace of huge singles: '1973,' 'Stay The Night' and 'Bonfire Heart.' He became quite astonishingly adept at social media — his pithiest Tweets were even published as a book, 2020's How To Be A Complete And Utter Blunt: The Diary Of A Reluctant Social Media Sensation. He started attracting a noticeably different audience to the one you might expect: anyone who turned up at his Greatest Hits tour might have been surprised to find not just 40 and 50 somethings, but people too young to remember Back To Bedlam as anything other than a fuzzy memory from their primary school years.

As James explains, "I think the truth is that they were fed my music on long car journeys. They were in the back of their parents' car and their parents were playing this album over and over again, while they're thinking "play something else!," but now it's engrained in them and they know every single word to every single song, and they're there singing along. I think it's been helped by my online presence, X/Twitter and a couple of things on TikTok where they go, "Oh, it's Blunty, and he's funny too!. So I'm getting a crowd of young people, stag dos, hen dos. It's kind of a bizarre place to be."

James will take to the road in June next year to embark on a special run of North American arena dates for the 'Back To Bedlam 20th Anniversary Tour,' where he will perform the Back To Bedlam album in its entirety, along with other classic hits from his career.

Included in this special 20th anniversary release comes a special version of the original album remastered for 2024, in addition to previously unreleased demos of the core songs from the album, plus previously unreleased songs from the Bedlam era.

In true James Blunt fashion, he explains; "I've released seven studio albums, but Back To Bedlam was the one people actually bought. So on its twentieth anniversary, the record label and I thought we should repackage it with some early demos, and milk it for all it's worth. It was one of the biggest selling albums of the Noughties, so here's hoping it makes a dent in the 20's."

Back To Bedlam featured the global smash hit 'You're Beautiful' and is one of the top ten best-selling albums of the Noughties, garnering five Grammy nominations. As James humbly approaches national treasure status in his native UK, he is widely regarded for his honesty, wit and charm, as showcased on record, on stage and with his ever-engaging social media banter.

Next year, James will play four dates across North America, kicking off June 12th in Toronto, and finishing July 3rd in Mexico City. Tickets on sale at www.jamesblunt.com

"I've been touring now for twenty years, and really, it's only Back To Bedlam that people want to hear… so on that album's twentieth anniversary, what better way to celebrate than to head out on the 'Back To Bedlam 20th Anniversary Tour'!" explains James. "I'll play all the songs from Back To Bedlam in full, from start to finish, and chuck in the better known songs from later albums to finish. It's going to be, well, it pains me to say it… beautiful."

And that...it will be. It's time to celebrate one of the UK's most esteemed solo artists of our time.