James Blunt: Criticism, Confidence & What Success Took From Me

**James Blunt** (0:02)
I had this complete naïve confidence that I will be a professional musician, that when I recorded that first album, Back to Bed, everyone's going to buy it. Ed Sheeran still has the belief that his next album will hit as big as the last. I know my next album won't be as big as my first, because my naïve confidence that I had, I don't have anymore, and so I won't quite get it there.

**Damian** (0:30)
When James Blunt recorded his album Back to Bedlam, he was absolutely certain it was going to work. Not hopeful, certain. It burned his bridges with every record label in Britain. It had been playing to 20 people on the 20th floor of a Ramada hotel, and yet he still knew, absolutely knew, that the whole world was soon going to hear it.
20 million albums later, he sat down with Jake and I and told us that that certainty has gone, and that losing it has changed what he's capable of. But that's okay.
James takes us inside the orchestrated press campaign that turned him into the country's punchline. The night he was held back in his dressing room at Jules Holland, so that Damon Albarn didn't have to stand next to him. The hug from Keith Flint from The Prodigy, which he never forgot. The song he wrote for his father, because he had never quite found a way to say it out loud. And the night in Carrie Fisher's bathroom that produced Goodbye My Lover in a single take. I promise you, this is a rich conversation about where belief actually comes from. And then what happens to it when you succeed? It starts with the confidence that he had before he actually knew anything.
I'd like you to welcome to High Performance, James Blunt.

**Jake** (1:56)
Welcome to High Performance.

**James Blunt** (1:57)
It's very nice to see you. It's been a while.

**Jake** (1:59)
I know. I think the last time we were together, we were racing cars around Goodwood. Yeah. And now here we are in these very comfy chairs.

**James Blunt** (2:04)
Took me 10 years to get back to you, to find you again.

**Jake** (2:07)
Yeah, you haven't texted or called. But I have tweeted, in fact, I tweeted today you were coming on the show.

**James Blunt** (2:12)
Right. Sorry, I was busy. I was on another.

**Jake** (2:14)
Yeah. Do you know why, though, I did it as an experiment to see what kind of messages I got back. And what do you think I got?

**James Blunt** (2:20)
Um, well, I don't know. What did my mother say?

**Jake** (2:24)
I got really positive messages. Really like, love James, what a legend, telling me he's a hero.

**James Blunt** (2:30)
Sweet. It really was my mother. That she has many burner accounts.

**Jake** (2:34)
It was mainly your family.

**James Blunt** (2:36)
I'm too just too shy to admit that was me.
Yeah, do you know what, it's been a journey for me because once upon a time I didn't have that kind of warmth of reaction. So, I suppose you stick around long enough and people just start treating you like you're part of the furniture and people are nice to me and it's a nice place to be.

**Damian** (2:54)
Well, can we look at some of those previous tweets that you've been sent because I'd be interested in if you can remember your comebacks on them when people...

**James Blunt** (3:03)
On the whole, I can because I promised I wrote them and the PR team did not write them because no PR team would be quite so disgusting.

**Damian** (3:12)
Well, give us your come up for this one then, James. James Blunt just has an annoying face and a highly irritating voice.

**James Blunt** (3:18)
And no mortgage.

**Damian** (3:20)
Brilliant. Next one.
No one really likes James Blunt, right?

**James Blunt** (3:26)
Yeah, I bought those 20 million albums myself.

**Jake** (3:29)
Yes.

**Damian** (3:30)
And the final one. Oh my fucking God, James Blunt is on the TV downstairs. Can this day get any worse?

**James Blunt** (3:36)
Coming upstairs now.

**Jake** (3:38)
Thing is though, they're funny and they're great. But I think this is a really interesting insight into the human mind, because when you were getting the negative criticism, you're the same person doing the same thing.
But somehow those responses, those replies, absolutely changed the narrative of how people talk and think about James Blunt, didn't they?

**James Blunt** (3:56)
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
I write some pretty earnest songs and sing them in a very squeaky voice. And so I think, and also doing interviews, if I'm asked about those, if you ask me about music, I'll be quite relatively serious about it, relatively serious about it. And I suppose through that medium of doing interviews, I suppose where the way journalists want to portray me was just very serious. And whenever I did do a joke, they just on the newspapers, they wouldn't add the ha-ha. So I guess where you got this serious guy ubiquitous over the airwaves. And so, yeah, I'd say people would expect to be serious. And then with the invention of Twitter, people realized that I'm not, I'm just an idiot.