The Blunt truth: You're Beautiful

All eyes will be on James Blunt when he launches his one-night-only show at the Starlive in Beijing on April 18. His fans could kill for a ticket, though the concert has been sold out nearly two month ago.

The Grammy-winning UK megastar is famous for You're Beautiful. It is a dewy and soft ballad about catching a glimpse of a former girlfriend in the subway. While critics have not rated it very highly, it reached No 1 from Latvia to Latin America and helped Blunt's debut album, Back to Bedlam, sell 11 million copies around the world and become one of this decade's most popular. From weddings to supermarkets, You're Beautiful was everywhere.

He released his second album last year, All the Lost Souls (The lead single, 1973 peaked at No 73 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart), and has sold out shows across the globe.

Before Blunt became a musician, he served in the army. He spent four-and-a-half years in the military, with six months in Kosovo as part of the peacekeeping force. Upon leaving the army, Blunt decided to pursue his dream of becoming a musician. In 2003, he was spotted by music producer Linda Perry who signed him to her Custard label. However, the road to success never runs smooth. He looked destined to become another struggling singer trying to scrape a living when his first two singles failed to make an impact on the British charts. But everything changed when his third single You're Beautiful, made it all the way to No 1 on the UK singles chart, and remained there for five weeks. The album Back to Bedlam soon followed and quickly became one of the biggest selling records of the year, remaining ten consecutive weeks at No 1. Since then, he has sold more than three million records, making him the first British artist to top the American singles chart in nearly a decade.

Blunt, 34, a throwback to the 1970s soft-rock golden age, has been quoted by Western media as saying that he will "never get used" to people screaming at him in the street.

His success proves a lasting theory: you spend years chasing the right song. And then, if you're lucky, if the song really takes off, you spend the rest of your life trying to escape it, or learning to live with it. A few years removed from You're Beautiful, he can still fill stages worldwide with fans who stay until the end.

(China Daily 04/18/2008 page20)