James Blunt – My Nemesis
Gnarls Barkley have apparently done the decent thing and pulled their song ‘Crazy’ from playlists, worried that people were getting bored with hearing it all the time. Good on them I say. It’s the same goodwill that John Cleese and Ricky Gervais showed by not making any more episodes of their incredibly successful series, and it never did them any harm.
Quit while you’re ahead. It’s a noble attitude, and one that must be incredibly difficult to have when you’re faced with indefinite amounts of royalty cheques. I just hope James Blunt will adopt the same attitude straight away.
The first time I heard his insipid ‘You’re Beautiful’ song was on the Joolz Holland show. I admit to being quite intrigued in the first few bars, it was vaguely Nick Drake sounding. But it only took a minute or two to I decide I wanted to kill the man. The sentiment, the delivery, everything about the song gets my blood boil each time I catch it. And wouldn’t you know it, he becomes an overnight success and the song as ubiquitous as coca-cola.
I retain music very easily, if I hear a tune once I can hum it back pretty much straight away. It’s obviously a handy skill when you’re working on a show with songs in it, but with people like James Blunt around it can be a complete pain in the arse. In Milan with the rice show last week the hotel played MTV at breakfast every morning. And there he was, mooning on about some wisemen with a semi by the sea, with his third internationally massive hit. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t rid my head of the song. Each and every morning. I don’t understand it, what makes a tune so catchy you want to rip your brain out and re-programme it to bar all calls from that number? Even writing this now makes me worry it’s seeping back in to my consciousness for a few hours.
Either James Blunt dies or I get an Ipod so I can self-administer some Death Metal or Nosebleed Techno as soon as he rears his ugly army-stock head. Please do yourself and all of us a favour and quit while you’re ahead, before your stage name becomes rhyming slang. James Blunt is a…