James Blunt kicked off his career with an epic start. The English singer-songwriter’s seminal track, “You’re Beautiful,” appeared on his debut album, Back to Bedlam, in 2004.
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While it served as the LP’s third single, it was the first to strike a chord with audiences. So much so that, on March 11, 2006, it rose to No. 1 on the U.S. singles chart.
While chatting with Oprah Winfrey in 2006, Blunt revealed the “kind of miserable” inspiration for the song.
“It was about seeing my ex-girlfriend on the Underground in London with her new man who I didn’t know existed,” he said. “She and I caught eyes and lived a lifetime in that moment, but didn’t do anything about it and haven’t seen each other since.”
In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, Blunt added, “Everyone has those moments where you wonder: ‘What if I’d said something?’”
James Blunt Was High During His Run-In With His Ex
Later, Blunt offered a more tongue in cheek version of his inspiration.
“It’s about me stalking somebody else’s girlfriend on the underground while I’m high,” he joked during a 2022 appearance on The John Bishop Show, before quipping, “But people play it at their weddings, which is nice.”
There’s truth to that joke, Blunt confirmed to The Guardian.
“The label asked me to remove the words ‘f**king high’ from ‘You’re Beautiful.’ I tried ‘particularly high,’ ‘especially high,’” he said. “Eventually I sang ‘flying high’ on the radio edit but wanted the released version left as it was. I told them: ‘I was f**king high!’”
As for the identity of the ex in question, Cambridge University’s student newspaper, Varsity, claimed to know the answer. Per a 2006 issue of the paper, Blunt wrote “You’re Beautiful” about his ex-girlfriend, Dixie Chassay, whom he was linked to in the early aughts. Blunt has never confirmed nor denied as much.
The Making of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”
After seeing his ex on the tube, Blunt went home and wrote the verses to the song in about two-and-a-half minutes, he revealed on the Spotify Music & Talk podcast in 2021. Blunt then “sat in the bath and wrote the chorus,” he said.
The music didn’t come as easily as the lyrics, though.
“I struggled with kind of how to put a backing track to it,” Blunt said. “I flew to Los Angeles, met up with Sacha Skarbek, who was helping me write at the time. He took me out for a sandwich around the corner from his house. As he was in the shop, I heard Ryan Adams’ song ‘La Cienega Just Smiled‘ and I could literally sing my song along with his. So when Sacha came out, I said, ‘I’ve got it. Let’s go home.’”
The men then teamed up with Amanda Ghost to finish the song, Blunt told The Guardian. Now, more than two decades later, the song is still widely known.
“I had no idea the song would be such a big hit, and it scared me at first. I thought I’d just be a musician putting out music,” Blunt told The Guardian in 2020. “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.”
Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images
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