James Blunt talks about his new album, All the Lost Souls

JAMES WIGNEY discovers that you only need look beyond the `drug called celebrity¿ to realise fame has never changed James Blunt.

JAMES Blunt has a drug problem. But despite living on the Spanish island of Ibiza, the clubbing capital of the world, it’s not the illegal powder and pills kind that troubles the British singersongwriter.

It’s ‘‘the curious drug called celebrity’’. Blunt’s story is well known — as well it may be given the number of times he has told it while promoting his smash debut album.

The former soldier with a demo tape and a dream hit the jackpot with Back to Bedlam which, championed by Elton John and superproducer Linda Perry, has become the biggest selling album of the new millennium, with an extraordinary 14 million albums sold.

While the trappings of his sudden celebrity have brought him wealth , awards and adulation, he is only too aware of the flip side to fame: loss of privacy and a swift, and sometimes vitriolic, backlash to his music.

He is almost as well known as a fixture at the world’s hottest nightspots, with a string of gorgeous women on his arm as he is for the rock/pop that made him a star.

His mega-hit You’re Beautiful was this year voted the most irritating song of all time and his last name became rhyming slang for a rude word.

His musings on the topic influence his album All the Lost Souls for release on Saturday.

As he sits in a luxury hotel not far from his island hideaway home, he speaks of his regular appearances on the gossip pages with a weary acceptance.

“I guess what is interesting is that now you see a picture and think that must be all new to me, but I was perfectly capable of a good party beforehand,” he says.

“It’s just that no one photographed me.

“In Los Angeles (in 2004 to record Back To Bedlam) I went to clubs every night, but no one photographed me then.

“In this past year when I recorded All the Lost Souls, I went out to a club almost every night.

“But now people say, ‘Wow, you have embraced your fame, you really go out a lot’, but life hasn’t really changed for me.”

Three years of talking about himself, coupled with a natural British reserve and rather charming line of deprecation, has made him a master of deflection.

Some of the famous faces he has been seen with include Lindsay Lohan, Czech model Petra Nemcova and his supposed current squeeze, holistic therapist Mika Simmons.

Just last week he performed a duet with Paris Hilton, supposedly another ex, at a party in Malibu.

But true to form, he’s not biting on any of that. “I’ve always been a private person and kept my relationships that way, be they friends or family or more,” he says.

“It’s not necessarily something I enjoy getting into that human construct of fame. If anyone should be celebrities it should be doctors and nurses and other people who do jobs that save people’s lives.”

Blunt’s first album connected with audiences throughout the world through the deeply personal lyrics of songs such as You’re Beautiful and Goodbye My Lover.

All his songs are written from his experience and relationships and there are plenty more examples on All the Lost Souls.

But it’s his observations on the maelstrom around him that make for the most compelling listening.

Songs such as One of the Brightest Stars, Give Me Some Love, Annie and I Can’t Hear the Music hint at his quest to stay grounded and his bemusement at the excesses and shallowness of the music industry.

“I really feel like it has been a social experiment rather than anything else,” he says.

“I’m a human being and I’m no greater than the next person. Yet, being thrust into a spotlight, I can see reality as it is and perceived reality — the one reported in the media. To see a shift in people’s responses to me the real person, after something they read about in the perceived reality, has been really interesting as an experiment.

“And I’ve written about that because a lot of our life is focused on that. We often define success in life through fame and money and wealth. I think fame has changed the way a lot of people respond to me.”

In the final song on the album, Blunt sings in the chorus, “If I can’t hear the music and the audience is gone, I will dance here on my own”.

It sums up his approach to making music, out of a need to do it rather than for commercial gain. As such, Blunt says it has been easy to divorce himself from the pressure of following up such a huge success as Back to Bedlam.

“I had to let go of that pressure for a moment and get back what I really do,” he says.

“And the core of that is not about impressing people, getting good reviews or selling any number of albums — the core of it is to be expressive through music and to enjoy and really have a passion for it as well.”

Nor is Blunt fazed by the critical backlash, which has seen him savaged particularly in the press of his homeland as being bland and middle of the road.

He accepts that music is subjective (“if you stick your head above the parapet, you are going to get shot at”) as well as the inevitable trade-off between credibility and commercial success.

“You sell 100 albums and you are underground, sell 100,000 albums and you are mainstream and some people don’t like mainstream,” he says.

“So it’s not necessarily the album that is mainstream, it’s just some people’s definition of how visible it is. There is nothing I could have done to expect that or necessarily change that so I am pretty relaxed in the way I approach it.”

Having a hit album and an established fan base allowed Blunt to trust his instincts and spread his wings while writing All the Lost Souls. But more so he credits his band, honed by 2½ years of touring, and return producer Tom Rothrock, for the sound of the CD, which he describes as “a ’70s rock album”, inspired by singersongwriters of the period such as Cat Stevens, Paul Simon, Elton John and Lou Reed.

“I wrote the first album on a piano and a guitar, thinking I would always play them on a piano and a guitar. Without the knowledge that I might have a band and without the knowledge that I might have an audience,” he says.

“It was really fun to write songs and know that I could mess around with a sense of freedom. Rather than just the one instrument I was thinking of I had five straight off.

“It’s five guys in a band playing songs that have a ’70s feel. We recorded it as best we could in that kind of ’70s way — there is very little between us as musicians and our instruments and getting it down on tape.

“We tried to catch it in an honest way. You can hear skin against strings and I think that’s why it has that ’70s vibe.

“The five of us sat in a room when we rehearsed these songs and we tried to capture a performance of 10 songs that are relevant to each other, that take you on a journey from A to B.”

All the Lost Souls is released on Saturday.