James Blunt - Some Kind of Trouble

Full DC disclosure: If we never, ever hear "You're Beautiful" again, that would be a truly beautiful thing. That inescapable song of saccharin aftertaste launched the meteoric rise of James Blunt in 2005, beginning an 18 million album sales juggernaut over two albums and making the former army officer a veritable pop celebrity in the U.K. Teethgnashing aside, the Blunt phenomenon finally came into perspective when we realized that the "soft rock" hero with the warbly near-falsetto was really just a branch off of a larger musical tree: The Bee Gees. No not the Saturday Night Fever platinum disco treacle, but the earlier stuff, grand middle-of-the-road pop melodies that had just enough "Brit Invasion" feel to make songs like "I've Gotta Get A Message to You" palatable. Suddenly Blunt made sense -- and in an OK, non-guilty kind of way.

New album Some Kind of Trouble, arriving in the U.S. January 18 via Atlantic, probably won't change too many minds -- most songs stay safely in the confines of predictable if hummably melodic mainstream pop cliche. But after we're done choking down some of the formulaic kool-aid of jaunty lead single "Stay the Night", we discover that there's some solid songwriting and striking production twists on display here and there. New single "So Far Gone" is both smart and smartly turned out, heading more into territory staked out by bands like The Fray and The Script. "These Are the Words" skips along with a Fleetwood Mac Rumours harmonied bounce, killer bass line and even a Lindsay Buckingham-ish guitar line.

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James Blunt - "These Are the Words" (from the album Some Kind of Trouble)

James Blunt - "So Far Gone" (from the album Some Kind of Trouble)