KUALA LUMPUR, March 23 — James Blunt is back and the British pop star is offering Malaysian fans a chance to listen to his fifth studio album The Afterlove with an exclusive pre-stream via Malay Mail Online.
The new album is a follow-up to his 2013 album Moon Landing, that reached platinum status in the UK and spent 33 weeks on the UK Top 40.
“I just don’t know how this album is going to be received. All I know is that I love it, and it might be something that only I love, but I genuinely think this is one of my most exciting albums,” says Blunt in a recent interview where he opened up about the new album.
“It feels very much like a fresh start for me. They say, “If you don’t change, you die”. Well, I’m on my fifth album — I couldn’t just do the same thing again. But I don’t know how this is going to play out.”
Ed Sheeran worked with Blunt to co-write The Afterlove and this is what the latter had to say: “I taught Ed Sheeran how to ski and he taught me how to write songs.
“I needed someone like him, who is very forthright, because knowing that people are going to hear it, and I’m a really private person, whereas I used to write very open songs, I’ve become more reclusive in the way I expose myself,” added Blunt.
“But I had Ed to say, “Come on, you need to open up a bit.” So it was great to have him there.”
The other talents who lent a hand on the album include Ryan Tedder, Amy Wadge (Ed Sheeran, Shannon Saunders), Johnny McDaid (Example, Biffy Clyro), Stephan Moccio (Miley Cyrus, The Weeknd) and MoZella (Miley Cyrus, One Direction).
There are also plans for a “The Afterlove Tour”, which includes a date at London’s Eventim Apollo that Blunt will headline tour.
Blunt has sold over 20 million albums worldwide and 12.8 million singles. He’s also amassed over 625 million views on YouTube and over 680 million global streams on streaming platforms.
The Afterlove is set for release tomorrow through Atlantic Records.
In Blunt’s own words, here is a track-by-track description of The Afterlove:
Love Me Better
“I wrote that with Ryan Tedder in his hotel room in London. The opening lines address some of the insults that have come my way on Twitter and elsewhere.
‘I’m pretty self-aware, so I know what’s gone on, what’s been said. Previously, I would have just tried to write songs that ignore it and don’t confront it, whereas this is an album that does confront all of those things in a way that I’m pretty relaxed with.
“And it has the lyric: Saw you standing outside a bar/Would have said ‘You’re beautiful’ but I’ve used that line before.
“It’s a thing that I joke about all the time, I just hadn’t found the right song for it.”
Bartender
“I did that with the guys who did that ‘Stitches’ song by Shawn Mendes — Teddy Geiger and Danny Parker — in Los Angeles.
“Alcohol fixes a multitude of problems. For a moment.”
Lose My Number
“Ryan Tedder is a formidable songwriter and I’ve had a really good working relationship with him over the last three albums — he and I really vibe off each other.
“I had a private gig in Venice, got up at four in the morning to fly to Amsterdam, to drive to Rotterdam, to have three hours with him before he went on stage, and during those three hours, we wrote Lose My Number.
“Then I flew out to Los Angeles to redo the vocals on it before deciding that we actually preferred the demo.”
Don’t Give Me Those Eyes
“Written with MoZella and Stefan Moccio in LA. I think that’s my favourite song off the album, which probably just shows my age, but it was a song that barely got written.
“I was in LA, doing some vocals and MoZella called and said, ‘I’m passing by, I could drop in for 20 minutes’. And in 20 minutes, we wrote what was the bed of the idea, and I went off and finished bits off by Skype with them.
“The vocals are all me, including the highest ones. I really hope we get to do the song as a single — it would sound amazing. It’s the strongest one on the record.
“The lyric is about a situation that everyone can relate to in their lives. The pain of something that’s great but can’t go on.”
Someone Singing Along
“I did this in glorious Mortlake, a romantic spot to be in, with Steve Robson, who I’ve worked with a lot.
“It’s written, pretty much, with a view to where we are today, and what’s going on in the world.
“When we first wrote it, we said we needed to get it out before the American election, but now it seems we don’t. It’ll apply any time.”
California
“I’ve been commuting to LA for two or three days at a time. LA’s a place I’ve worked in a lot, so I’m really comfortable there.
“This song has got a darkness to it — like the music in that Ryan Gosling movie Drive. It’s not as safe as the Radio 2 market that I had before.
“California is the other end of the scale to Don’t Give Me Those Eyes.”
Make Me Better
“Ed Sheeran works quickly, he doesn’t get bogged down in it all. He’s very free-flowing, and you can really tell that, because it does sound like he’s just talking to you. Whereas before, I thought, yes, he’s an amazing talent, but I could see the simplicity going through and I thought, “It’s not very complicated”. But now I’ve realised that actually the simplicity is his genius.
“He’s my backing singer on that song as well. That was another instance of just writing a song, in a moment, and then finding the demo aspects of it all in the album.”
Time Of Our Lives
“Written by Ed Sheeran, Ryan Tedder and myself.
“It’s always worth trying to write a song that you can hear being played in a stadium rather than in a small bar.”
Heartbeat
“This concerns the death of a relationship. It could be about death itself, they’re the same thing, in many ways.
“I suppose the song itself is the CPR of a relationship — wanting to try and make the heart beat again, and failing.”
Paradise
“It’s about the euphoria of hooking up with someone. We tried to write songs that catch these little moments. I wrote Paradise with Amy Wadge at SARM in Notting Hill — that’s Amy singing in the background. It was fun to do and captures the spontaneity of the moment.”
