However, it was the third single, "You're Beautiful", that became Blunt's breakout hit. The song debuted at #12 in the UK, and demonstrated a rare trend of upward mobility on the UK charts, rising all the way to the #1 position, six weeks after its debut. The song also received massive airplay in the UK which was able to propel Back To Bedlam to #1 on the albums chart, unseating the record-breaking album X&Y by Coldplay from the pole position.
After the success of "You're Beautiful" in the UK, the song crossed over to mainland Europe, becoming one the biggest hits of summer 2005 across the continent.
In the USA, "You're Beautiful" made its debut in the summer of 2005 on WPLJ, a prominent radio station in New York City, despite not having been released to radio yet. Once the song was released to radio stations in the Fall, the song climbed into to the Top 10 at three radio formats: Adult Contemporary, Adult Top 40, and Adult Alternative. "You're Beautiful" is also a Top 5 hit on the US Hot Digital Songs chart, published by Billboard Magazine.
The videos for three of Blunt's singles to date feature symbolism and dark imagery. In the video for "High", he is buried in a desert. In the video for "Wisemen", he is kidnapped and taken hostage. In the video for "You're Beautiful", he alludes to suicide.
His sudden rise to popularity has garnered resentment among musicians in Britain and in Ireland - his short-notice billing at a major summer festival, ousting Declan O' Rourke, led the latter to refer to him as "James Cucking Funt" live on-air nationally across Ireland. The nickname has stuck and Blunt is intensely despised by fans of O' Rourke and others.
In other parts of the UK, the name James Blunt has now become popularly used 'Cockney Rhyming Slang.' This could stem from two different things. it is either just that it by-chance rhymed, so was used randomly and caught on.
On December 3, 2005, he performed as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live and the host was Dane Cook, and on December 9, 2005 NBC's Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
The Sunday Telegraph's Mandrake column has claimed, along with his real name being ‘Blount’, that he is in fact 3 years older than is claimed. Critics of Blunt have cited this, along with vast marketing investment and perhaps subjectively, middle-of-the-road inoffensive songs, in seeing him as more in the mould of a commercial act rather than a genuine singer-songwriter.
In January 2006, he was nominated for five Brit awards. In January 2006, he claimed he tackled a burglar who broke into his hotel room by supposedly attacking him with an alleged BRIT trophy, but these are his words and no evidence has emerged to support this claim. The far-fetched remarks by Blunt caused tabloid papers to be unsure as to whether this was a case of exaggeration or simply a fairy-tale to please his followers.
--Wikipedia
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