James Blunt at the Royal Albert Hall review: Dull tunes and tired gags

Goodbye My Twitter? Blunt would be better off concentrating on songwriting than his social media presence
Singer-songwriter James Blunt
Getty
Gemma Samways26 July 2021

With the live industry on a pandemic-induced pause for much of 2020 and the first half of 2021, musicians have had to come up with increasingly creative ways to stay in touch with fans, from live-streamed shows and Instagram Q&As to digital songwriting camps. So when the European leg of James Blunt’s Once Upon A Mind tour was derailed in the March of 2020, the Hampshire-born singer-songwriter took the only logical course of action: he released a hardback compendium of his Tweets.

Entitled ‘How To Be A Complete and Utter Blunt’, the novelty toilet tome documents the former-army captain’s recent career renaissance as king of Twitter, with an unmatched ability to take down trolls with all manner of acerbic clap-backs and self-deprecating quips. It proved a pretty shrewd move too, appealing to the logic that if you can’t get on board with Blunt’s notoriously sentimental soft-rock balladry, you’ll likely enjoy his playfully self-aware social media presence.

So what happens when the critics disappear and he’s faced with a theatre full of adoring fans, as he was at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday night? The answer is that the focus falls squarely on the music, which - let’s be honest - isn’t ideal for a songwriter as offensively insipid as Blunt.

That’s not to say the much-postponed show wasn’t without its merits. Aside from the fact it was an undeniable thrill to watch live music in a packed venue for the first time in sixteen months, Blunt’s tight, four-piece rock band often improved upon the source material. Their expansive arrangements added an anthemic edge to the 70s-inspired MOR of 1973 and imbued set opener How It Feels To Be Alive with a slow-burning drama that was further accentuated by the innovative use of three giant video screens.

The skilful guitar shredding that closed out Postcards was so impressive that you could almost forgive the twee ukulele duelling that took up the first two-thirds of the song. And Blunt’s decision to bring his wife onstage beforehand and dedicate the song to her for her birthday felt like a genuinely sweet touch.

Unfortunately, no amount of musicianship could improve Blunt’s adenoidal bleating, which sounded no different than usual despite the fact that the singer was still recovering from Covid. Nor could it disguise his exasperatingly anodyne lyrics, which are packed with empty platitudes and toe-curling clichés. And with no dissenting voices in the venue, he dedicated his between-song banter to admonishing invisible foes, making tired gags about quarantining with his mother-in-law, plus a particularly distasteful joke implying that his recent illness was an act of sabotage undertaken by the Chinese government.

It was lows like these that left you thinking that, instead of workshopping waspish put-downs, perhaps Blunt’s time would be much better spent simply writing better songs.

Royal Albert Hall, SW7

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