James Blunt
Back to Bedlam

James Blunt knows you're sick of ''You're Beautiful,'' and there's nothing he can do about it. ''In the U.K., after the fourth week at No. 1, we stopped [manufacturing] it as a single to try and curb it,'' says the 32-year-old British singer-songwriter of his breathy breakthrough hit. But given this country's radio-driven charts, that wasn't so simple. ''Saying to radio stations 'Please stop supporting me' would be foolish.''

The track's 38-week run on the Billboard Hot 100 did create a legion of Blunt fans who swoon over his intimate, confessional tunes and crackly-sweet falsetto. And they soon learned that his now-double-platinum debut album, Back to Bedlam, contained nine other songs — some of which were written while the former British army officer was serving in Kosovo in 1999 — that are just as affecting as ''Beautiful.'' As a result, Blunt (no relation to fellow breakout Emily) scored five Grammy nominations and spent much of 2006 again traveling internationally, but under quite different circumstances. ''I've just come off the James Blunt world tour,'' he says. ''I never expected to have those words in the same sentence.'' — Dave Karger