Once Upon A Mind

Product Information

Dutchcharts.nl – James Blunt – Who We Used to Be" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 4 November 2023. Zemler, Emily (2 August 2023). "James Blunt Welcomes the Highs and the Lows on Breezy Single 'Beside You' ". Rolling Stone . Retrieved 4 November 2023. My dad, he needs an O+ blood group kidney donor, and it’s a long wait, and life gets pretty shit in the meantime. And I suppose for me, the positive is that I have a chance to say the things I would never have otherwise said. To be able to say to him, ‘I’m not your son, you’re not my father/We’re just two grown men saying goodbye/No need to forgive, no need to forget/I know your mistakes, and you know mine.' I idolized this man throughout my childhood, but as we grew older, I realized that he had his own fallibilities, and that’s an awesome thing to see because you suddenly can become friends then. And then obviously as parents get older, the responsibility starts to weigh on the children that look after them. Although that can be painful, there’s something beautiful about it, too. We recorded this in the Guards Chapel, on Birdcage Walk [in London], where I'd been as a serving soldier, and the Trinity Boys Choir came and sang and they sounded amazing.”

I was the guy who sang that song on the subway 14 years ago, going after another man's girlfriend, saying, ‘You’re beautiful.’ And so I just wonder what’s happened to him now. Is he any better? I mean, he made a ton of money off the song. So now, I imagine that man's chat-up line would just be, ‘Hey, I’ve got a real fast car outside.’ That would be as cheesy as it gets now, as shallow as that.” Offiziellecharts.de – James Blunt – Once Upon a Mind" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 31 October 2019. Zemler, Emily (2 August 2022). "James Blunt Welcomes the Highs and the Lows on Breezy Single 'Beside You' ". Rolling Stone . Retrieved 26 October 2023.The Girl That Never Was (Official video)". 12 October 2023 . Retrieved 31 October 2023– via YouTube. Power, Ed (27 October 2023). "James Blunt, Who We Used to Be review: Give the posh troubadour the benefit of the doubt!". I . Retrieved 31 October 2023. I leave [my wife] behind for 18 months at a time, and the song talks about there being an ocean between us—in the physical sense whilst I’m away on tour, in America, or Asia, or Australia, or wherever. But the message is very warm. It says, ‘Without you, I’m just cold.’ There’s definitely risks in saying such things, but the point of music is to be moved by it.” The ARIA Report: Week Commencing 6 November 2023". The ARIA Report. No.1757. Australian Recording Industry Association. 6 November 2023. p.6.

On 2 August 2023, Blunt announced the release date for Who We Used to Be, his first studio album since 2019's Once Upon a Mind. [3] Houghton, Cillea (22 September 2023). "James Blunt Drops Nostalgic 'All the Love That I Ever Needed' ". American Songwriter . Retrieved 31 October 2023. Ultratop.be – James Blunt – Who We Used to Be" (in French). Hung Medien. Retrieved 5 November 2023. If he was to dedicate the album to a single person, he says, it would be his father, who has stage-four chronic kidney disease and needs an O-positive kidney donor. Griffiths, George (30 October 2023). "Taylor Swift's 1989 (Taylor's Version) already has the biggest opening week of the year". Official Charts Company . Retrieved 31 October 2023.

Hallam, Katy (27 October 2023). "BBC The One Show viewers sobbing as James Blunt shares tragic reason for new song". Birmingham Mail . Retrieved 31 October 2023.

The album's second single, "All the Love That I Ever Needed" was released on 22 September 2023. [7]Ellwood-Hughes, Pip (27 October 2023). "James Blunt – Who We Used To Be review". Entertainment Focus . Retrieved 1 November 2023. Dutchcharts.nl – James Blunt – Once Upon a Mind" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 2 November 2019. My favourite moment comes at the midpoint of the album on 5 Miles. The song explodes into a big dance anthem with tropical beats and a sing-a-long chorus. I can imagine if he had teamed up with a big dance star, this song would likely be a big hit on the charts. There’s definitely the possibility for some killer dance remixes. Offiziellecharts.de – James Blunt – Who We Used to Be" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 3 November 2023. Le Top de la semaine: Top Albums Fusionnes – SNEP (Week 45, 2019)" (in French). Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique . Retrieved 13 November 2019. [ permanent dead link]

We’ve had a big discussion about it,” he continues, “weeks of me saying, ‘I need that’. Because it’s not just me singing a song, it’s me feeling a song, and that break [in my voice] is everything.”It is an album about the cycle of life – his father’s chronic illness; his guilt about leaving his wife to tour for months on end; the birth of his two young sons; the death of his old friend and patron Carrie Fisher – which may move his fans to tears. As it does Blunt, twice, over the course of our interview. Still, everything wasn’t entirely rosé with The Afterlove. He mentions another of those big discussions, “not quite a row but pretty close”, about a song called “OK”, written with Steve Mac (co-writer of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You”), who also produced it. “I really didn’t enjoy where it got to, but the label said: ‘This has to go on, this is the direction, this is your first single.’ I said, ‘absolutely not’.