The rise of James Blunt proves that pop is a true equal-opportunities employer. Posh chaps need no longer pretend to be boys from the hood in order to make a career in music, as long as they can sing in tune. And if that stiff upper lip can be made to quiver a bit - because its owner has just seen a beautiful face in a crowded place, for instance - then 11m sales can follow. That, astonishingly, is what Blunt's Back to Bedlam album has racked up. It is further distinguished by the fact that the track Goodbye, My Lover is - he tells us tonight - "the number-one song played at funerals". So he has even made inroads there.
But can the former Household Cavalryman repeat the feat with his new album, All the Lost Souls? He takes it out for a low-key spin at Koko, where a night of surprises is not in store. Three years into his mystifyingly successful career, he hasn't tampered with a winning formula. And why should he, given that an equally mystifying number of women find his poetic-squaddie persona wonderful. (But why? He is still more far more squaddie than poet - utterly stiff even when fans squeal his name.)
He throws away You're Beautiful - recently voted the most irritating song of all time - three songs into the set, but that is fine, since new ones such as 1973 and Shine On tapped the same vein of greeting-card wistfulness, with the same lyrical obviousness ("Shine on with your smile, just as bright as the sun"). He tells us he made the new album in Ibiza, but if it had been recorded in the Sandhurst barracks the soporific effect would have been the same. At ease, Captain Blunt, and for heaven's sake, loosen up.
