James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” single was so successful that he used the royalties to purchase his home.
“Twenty years ago today, I put out the song that bought me this house,” Blunt, 51, said in a Friday, May 30, TikTok video. “I mean, who would’ve thought a song about being high as a kite on drugs, stalking someone else’s girlfriend would resonate quite so much?”
He added, “Thank you, guys. You’re beautiful.”
In Blunt’s video, he offered a glimpse of his abode, which features wooden beams on the ceiling, terracotta tiles on the floor and a pair of French doors that led to the living room. For decor, the area was decked out with a cozy white sofa, coordinating pillows and a pair of end tables that held lamps.
Blunt skyrocketed to fame when “You’re Beautiful” was released in 2004.
“One day I was on the underground [subway] in London and saw an ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend,” the British musician recalled of the inspiration behind the ballad during a 2020 interview with The Guardian. “Our eyes met, but we just walked past each other, and I went home and wrote the words to ‘You’re Beautiful’ in two minutes. I went to see my songwriter friend Sacha Skarbek in Los Angeles, and, with Amanda Ghost as a cowriter, we finished the song.”
He continued, “It’s always been portrayed as romantic, but it’s actually a bit creepy. It’s about a guy [me] who’s high and stalking someone else’s girlfriend on the subway. But everyone has those moments where you wonder, ‘What if I’d said something?’”
After polishing up the lyrics and melody, Blunt played the track for singer-songwriter Linda Perry during the South by Southwest festival in Texas.
“[She] said she wanted to sign me to her new label. The label asked me to remove the words ‘f***ing high’ from ‘You’re Beautiful,’” he recalled. “I tried ‘particularly high,’ ‘especially high’ [and], eventually, I sang ‘flying high’ on the radio edit but wanted the released version left as it was. I told them, ‘I was f***ing high!’”
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Going far to prove a point. James Blunt forced himself to go on an all-meat diet while studying at the University of Bristol — and faced some major health consequences. The “You’re Beautiful” singer, 46, attended the university in the mid-90s before his music career took off, studying both aerospace manufacturing engineering and sociology. While […]
While speaking with The Guardian, Blunt admitted that he “had no idea the song would be such a big hit.”
“It scared me at first,” he said at the time. “I thought I’d just be a musician putting out music. The song became so ubiquitous that it started to irritate people, but I’m still proud of it and I love my job. I sang it at Elton John and David Furnish’s civil ceremony, and I’m about to start my sixth world tour. Without ‘You’re Beautiful,’ it’d be a tour of north London.”
Blunt has since continued touring and making music, though he always comes home to his cozy pad.
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