YMMV / James Blunt

• Americans Hate Tingle: He is often seen as a textbook example of a 2000s One-Hit Wonder for his chart-topper "You're Beautiful", which is often brought up for snarky reasons. They may not know that the album it came from, Back to Bedlam, was the best-selling album of the '00s in his native UK and the 16th best-selling album of all time there.
• One-Hit Wonder: As noted above, "You're Beautiful" was Blunt's only hit in the US, though he had more success in the UK. Ironically, fear of him becoming one was why Atlantic Records vetoed his approval of "Weird Al" Yankovic parodying the song for the album Straight Outta Lynwood.
• Refrain from Assuming: "1973" is sometimes thought to be called "Here We Go Again".
• Signature Song: "You're Beautiful", of course, is his overall signature song. By album:
  • Back to Bedlam: Literally every song on the album experienced some major degree of popularity, but "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover" remain the most famous, with "High", "No Bravery", and "Wisemen" also continuing to get attention.
  • All the Lost Souls: "1973", with "Carry You Home" and "Same Mistake" as runners up.
  • Some Kind of Trouble: "Stay the Night".
  • Moon Landing: "Bonfire Heart", although also "Postcards" and "Heart to Heart" are well-remembered.
  • The Afterlove: "Love Me Better".
  • Once Upon a Mind: "Cold" and "Monsters".
• Tear Jerker: Blunt's entire musical career has more or less been based on these, but there are a few standouts:
  • Arguably the most devastating is "Monsters". Written in tribute to Blunt's father Charles, who was dying of kidney failure at the time, James Blunt is noticeably tearful during the shooting of the music video. Many have called it not only Blunt's most emotional work, but also one of the saddest songs ever written. Fortunately, the release of the song prompted a distant cousin to donate a kidney just in time to save Charles' life.
  • "Courtney's Song", his tribute to Carrie Fisher. Blunt and Fisher had been very close for a very long time, and the weight of his loss is plain to hear.
  • Less personal, but no less emotional, is "Carry You Home," about that "lover's final breath" mentioned in "Cry".
• Vindicated by History: At the start of his career, James was viewed as a bit of a loser by both his contemporaries and a not-insignificant portion of the general listening public, becoming the butt of jokes, the source of parodies, and the origin of a spot of rhyming slang. Thanks to a combination of time, his own maturation as a musician, and the coming of many more widely-ridiculed musicians in the nearly 20 years since, he's much more respected now, with former critics looking back on even some of his old work with nostalgia. And yet he still rolls with his old reputation in stride.

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