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In the News
( 2 stories between 15th November 2010 and 20th January 2011 )Thursday Throwdown: James Blunt's Some Kind of Trouble
Jan, 20 2011
This week we bring you two extremely different reviews of the exact same record by the “You're Beautiful” crooner, James Blunt.
Some Kind of Trouble, Blunt’s third studio record, was released in the U.S. on Tuesday this week. While All Music Guide had positive things to say about this effort, Michael Cragg of the U.K’s Guardian did not agree.
All Music Guide praises SKOT, saying, “[The record] is a step in the right direction for Blunt, a move toward love songs free of pretension...Blunt’s strength is his embrace of soft rock cliché, whether he’s murmuring about a “Heart of Gold” over crawling chords, or cheerfully bouncing along on “I’ll Be Your Man.”
Cragg’s overview, however, is not as cheery. He pans the record and calls it “shallow, soulless and strangely cynical…a thoroughly depressing listen.” And the negative doesn’t end there, “Nearly every song features Blunt's breathless croon over a bed of simple piano chords or chugging guitars, and the few deviations…seem like profound experimentation.”
Check out the record for yourself, then head on over to our Facebook and let us know if you agree with AMG or the Guardian.
-Erin O.
Did James Blunt Save The World?
Nov, 15 2010
English singer-songwriter James Blunt says he ignored an order from a superior while serving in the British Army that could have started a third world war.
Blunt was a lead officer among 30,000 Nato troops stationed in Kosovo in 1999. "I was given the direct command to overpower... 200 or so Russians," he told BBC Radio. "And the practical consequences of that political reason would be aggression against the Russians."
Six years later Blunt became famous for his maudlin ballad "You're Beautiful," about his inaction when confronted by a beautiful girl, but we can all be glad of his inaction when confronted by "200 Russian soldiers lined up pointing their weapons at us aggressively."
"The direct command [that] came in from [U.S.] general Wesley Clark was to overpower them... [but] there are things that you do along the way that you know are right, and those that you absolutely feel are wrong."
Fortunately, British general Sir Mike Jackson intervened to spare Blunt a court martial. "[His] exact words at the time were, 'I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting world war three'."
