MUSIC REVIEW
Back
to Bedlam – James Blunt
This review was written for a university subject in September 2005 and
performed at Writers on the Make
as part of the Brisbane Writers Festival at the Cremorne Theatre on October 1,
2005. Generally, people liked it (the review, not the album).
James Blunt is a cheat.
Singer-songwriters are supposed to be geniuses. They are supposed to stun us
with their musicianship, overwhelm us with their poetry, dazzle us with their
vision of the world. James Blunt can’t do any of this. Yes, it is good in
theory that Australia has a singer-songwriter at the top of its album charts
instead of an Idol winner. Unfortunately, Blunt’s debut album Back to
Bedlam reveals that he doesn’t have a view of the world; he thinks poetry
is that rhyme-y stuff that schoolgirls write in their diaries; and his idea of
musicianship is the Fairstar!
The first line of a career is
important. An opening line of the quality of “Hello darkness my old friend” or
“Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street” can be a precursive
summary of a lifetime’s work. The first line most people will hear Blunt sing
is the first line of the single, You’re Beautiful: “My life is
brilliant”. Music fans are reputedly such a melancholy lot that the expected
response might be “so what could you possibly have to say?” but that sentiment
assumes that opening line has anything to do with the rest of the song.
In You’re Beautiful, Blunt
sees a woman and her husband/boyfriend sitting on a train together. He falls in
love immediately and is undeterred by her unavailability because, he tells us,
he’s “got a plan”. This plan lasts until the fourth line of the chorus in which
he states, “I don’t know what to do ‘cause I’ll never be with you”. Some plan.
Maybe it was a short-term plan. You know, the kind that only lasts six bars,
but hey, who cares? His life is brilliant!
But I’ve glossed over the
descriptive beauty of the chorus: “You’re beautiful / you’re beautiful / you’re
beautiful, it’s true”. I’m sure the woman is glad he stuck the “it’s true” on
the end because she was fearing “you’re beautiful... oh, no, sorry, it was just
the angle”.
These problems could be forgiven
if they were restricted to one song (remember, hit singles aren’t about great
art; they’re about getting laid after the gig) but the lyrical inanity goes
from pointless to wasteful.
Blunt, at age 22, served as
Captain of the British Army in Kosovo during the late 90s. He has personal
experience of war (the closing track No Bravery was written while
leaning against a tank) so his two anti-war songs to close the album don’t lack
for credibility. Cry begins “I have seen peace / I have seen pain”.
Apparently not enough to bother telling us anything about them, but it’s nice
to know he’s seen them. His tank hymn is no more revelatory: “I see no bravery
anymore, only sadness”. The rest of the song makes the outlandish claim that,
when there’s a war on, people die! These are kids descriptions for adult
experiences.
Which brings me to the issue of
the language warning. The printed warning on the back cover itself claims “This
album contains lyrics of an adult nature”. Heh heh heh, no. Even apart from the
three sparolaccie, this album is 100% lyrics-of-an-adult-nature free.
More damningly, James can’t even manage to swear like an adult.
In You’re Beautiful, Blunt
sings, “She could see from my face that I was --- fucking high”. That’s right;
he even pauses to see how many other kids are listening. This is not an adult
lyric. “Smiling as the shit comes down” is an adult lyric because it speaks
about the stoicism needed in the adult world. “Are you thinking of me when you
fuck her?” is an adult lyric because it shows anger at a lack of adult
sensitivity. “She could see from my face that I was --- fucking high”? – NOT an
adult lyric! If Blunt really wants to capture the essence of his dilemma, may I
suggest, “She found out I was a stoner / so now I’m left holding my boner”.
Parents, if you don’t buy this album for your 12-year-old, don’t let it be because
of the language warning. Their swearing is already more sophisticated than
James Blunt’s.
I have so far neglected the
musical element of Blunt’s songs – and so should you. Here’s the technical
information: every song is in 4/4 time between 77 and 95 beats per minute; the
drummer plays quavers on the hi-hat, the bassist holds a semibreve on the
tonic, and the guitarist strums the chord while the piano plays it as either an
arpeggio or a clunk – in all ten songs! The occasional Hammond organ is played
by someone who just likes to fiddle with the buttons and the instrumental solos
possess an originality and virtuosity not seen since School of Rock.
Thankfully, at a total playing time of just under forty minutes, the record
company knows the value of the mercy rule.
Blunt’s voice is not an issue.
Sure, it’s a little Bee-Gees-meets-Fine-Young-Cannibals, but he has a rich
upper register and he does have some idea of how to subtly colour his voice to
shift the mood of a song. This would be a useful skill if any of his songs
demanded subtle shifts in mood. That he puts them in the song anyway suggests
that he’s a singer in search of a song. He won’t care; his life is brilliant,
remember?
Blunt’s problem is that he doesn’t
know what it is he’s trying to say. He thinks he’s writing songs about love and
war. He’s not. The breadth of his understanding of these topics is “love sucks”
and “war is bad”. A popular music career cannot be sustained on such a naive
understanding of life (well, except if you’re Sting).
His next problem is that even if
he did know, he wouldn’t know how to say it. He knows how to make clichés
rhyme, but frequently he even has trouble picking the most relevant cliché.
He then sets these malapropisms to
one musical structure as often as he can get away with it.
These might be considered
significant problems for a songwriter, but by far the biggest problem is that
Blunt doesn’t care. His life is brilliant! He’s got a cute face, a flat
stomach, a worldwide hit album and, by the end of his concert tour, will have
the world’s biggest collection of trainer bras! Why would he want to try
writing anything better?
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