It’s no exaggeration to say that few men in recent times have managed to U-turn their public perception quite so successfully as James Blunt.
As his saccharine hit You’re Beautiful clogged up the charts and the radio back in 2004, he was – without exaggeration – one of the most hated men in Britain. Cue the advent of Twitter, a whole host of hilarious replies and comebacks in which he owned his own uncoolness and position as a hate figure, and slowly but surely gained everyone’s respect. He recently told us: “My record label started it up and asked if I could promote my music. I thought, ‘That sounds really boring.’ So I decided I’d just abuse myself on it.”
And the Bluntmeister general is back at it again with this new TV advert for his new album The Afterlove, which features – what album doesn’t these days? – a co-write with Ed Sheeran, the man who has taken his crown as the easy target for people looking to slag someone off for being a bit boring yet stratospherically successful.
To explain it would be to ruin it, so here it is:
Excellent.
While we’re here, another chance to remind you all that – no matter what you think about him, 1973 remains an undisputed, all-time, absolute banger of a tune.
