On Thursday this week I attended James Blunts concert in the 3Arena on his tour to mark the 20th anniversary of his debut album “Back to Bedlam”.
I originally started to listen to James Blunt because I found his online antics to be quite amusing, especially once he agreed to legally change his name, to anything of the publics choosing, if his debut album went back to number one late last year.
Now I have to admit, I was not expecting all that much from James Blunt, he’s currently 51 and I hadn’t known him as one for being overly performative or as an artist that excels live, but I was utterly blown away by his performance.
Now the 3Arena has always been one of my favourite venues, it’s incredibly well set up, in a very easily accessible location, perfect sound design, and the seat layout makes it hard to have a bad seat anywhere in the arena.
The setlist for this show started straight off into the debut album start to finish, and with the song “You’re Beautiful” coming as the second song in the setlist, there were certainly fears, even from himself, that he may have put the hits out too early.
This was absolutely not the case, through that album is a few more hits and then a strangely intimate back half with some slower more emotional songs, culminating in one of the most powerful performances I have seen, his rendition of his song “No Bravery”. A song about war, with him alone on the piano, only one stage light set to him, while on the screens in the background played footage of what appeared to be his own video diary from the war, in which he served as a captain in the late 90s.
The second half of the show consisted of the hits off the other albums, including a cover of “Cuz I Luv You” by Slade, partway through which James Blunt ran off the stage and up through the aisles climbing on the railing between the seating blocks and high giving people all the way through, including me, and almost falling backwards onto me and my friend after getting down from a railing directly behind us.
Interspersed throughout all this was his widely renowned comedic wit, a naturally funny man, with a very British style self-deprecating humour, commenting on the fact he may have “fucked this one up” by playing his hits too early, or apologising to men in the audience who’s wives had dragged them there, encouraging them to try and use this good deed to get a “little something” from their wives afterwards, and offering empathy as he said he “would not go to a James Blunt concert unless you paid me, which you all did”.
Stage Setup: 8/10, A surprisingly detailed and intricate stage design, 2 screens either side of the stage showing the performers and one large screen behind showing either the performers or the visuals for the song, some of which were lyrics, visualisers, or even war diaries as stated earlier.
Artist Performance: 10/10, This is not a performance I would have expected from James Blunt in a million years, the absolute raw energy of that man and his being in greta physical condition for 51, I guess half a decade in the military would do that for you. The natural comedic charm and the powerful voice, including some moments of pure raspy powerful singing you’d more expect from Bruce Springsteen than James Blunt.
Support: 8/10, It’s almost as if James Blunt didn’t want to be the biggest one hit wonder at his own event, often insulted due to his status as one, to the point of leaning into it and doing a documentary called “One Brit Wonder”, James Blunt got Toploader to do the support, one of the only bands more deserving of the title one hit wonder. While I did not know the majority of the songs, the band put on a rather good show, then came out with a cover of “Mr Blue Sky” as the penultimate song, but all that previous setlist could’ve been a disaster and it would still have been redeemed by the final song, “Dancing in the Moonlight”, one of the catchiest songs of all time, and their version being the most famous, it was only fitting to end it and got the crowd perfectly prepared for the main event.
Merchandise: 8/10, Honestly, the merch would’ve most likely scored a 10/10, but due to Dublin being the last stop on this leg of the tour, we were left with the scraps of merch remaining from the other dates, and they even had to throw in some merch from last years tour to remedy it, that being said the merch throughout the tour looked phenomenal, and what were greeted with was decently good aswell, including a range of merchandise items made in collaboration with Rizla Papers, one of the largest manufacturers of cigarette papers, and quite a few signed items up for sale, all at very good prices for concert merch.
Crowd: 6/10, Falling a bit short here, the crowd was rather pleasant towards the beginning, but has one of the largest tendencies towards excessive alcohol consumption I’ve seen in my days of going to concerts, which ended up with quite a few verbal arguments and one physical engagement that I could observe from where I was sitting. Other than the few bad apples though, the crowd otherwise was decent, but missed that something you can’t quite put your finger on that makes a truly great crowd.
Overall: 8/10, An amazing performer, one of the best I’ve seen in my so far short life of gig-going, an incredibly energetic and passionate performer, and what seems to be a down to earth nice man, you wouldn’t go wrong with booking yourself some tickets on his next go around just to see the spectacle that is James Blunt, and how he defies all expectations as “Just another one hit wonder”.
Next Up: Heilung, 02 Apollo Manchester, 21/4/25
Jays Concert Blog 