James Blunt is one of the most sensitive and versatile British pop singer-songwriters of the last two decades. His latest work is "Who We Used To Be", marked by the friction with electronic music.
Almost two decades have passed since James Hillier Blount - the real name of that young Briton - burst onto the charts halfway around the world with songs like "You're Beautiful" or "Goodbye My Lover", taken from the breakthrough album "Back To Bedlam" (2004). We hardly knew then that he had been a British Army reconnaissance officer during the Kosovo conflict in 1999. He was a star out of nowhere. But in all this time, the musician has shown a commendable capacity for regeneration, confirming that he is much more than an intimate singer-songwriter, possessing a talent that is in the line of David Gray, Chris Martin (Coldplay), Ed Sheeran (precisely the godfather of one of his children), Sam Smith and other illustrious gentlemen of British pop. The latest proof is "Who We Used To Be" (2023), his recent seventh album. A work in which, as if he had been soaked by the dance music so typical of the island of Ibiza, where he has lived for years, he has had the production of Jonny Coffer (Kendrick Lamar, FKA twigs, Beyoncé), Jack and Coke (Rita Ora, Charli XCX), Steve Robson (Take That, Leona Lewis) and Red Triangle (Louis Tomlinson, Rauw Alejandro) to shake up his argument and make it more versatile than ever, just when he could live on the rents of his twenty million records sold. An excellent way to approach his fiftieth birthday.
