James C*nt

James Blunt started off as an irritance here, a former military sot with a song on the radio that made me cringe every time I heard it. I like pop music fine - and even enjoy a lot of David Gray's stuff - but something about the whine in Blunt's voice made my skin crawl. Of course now he's gone from having a successful UK single to being a really big international popstar, on the charts across the world and with the bestselling album in the UK last year.

It's fascinating, therefore, to read this lengthy MySpace blog entry by producer Lukas Burton (Dido, etc), where he talks about investing in, working with, and getting screwed by a nascent James Blunt. Honest, self-deprecating, and only a little bit bitter.

We met and he sang a couple of bits for me with his guitar and we hung out. His stuff was crude, occasionally laughably direct, and betrayed his relative lack of musicianship or discernible influence - it sounds unlikely but I think he genuinely hadn't even heard of some people like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell let alone taken any of their music on board (a fact about which he was at least open and affable). But I kind of loved the guy.

And while you're there, just in case you doubt the story, you can download a couple of mp3s from the Burton/Blunt sessions.