James Blunt review: To be Blunt, it’s bland balladry and flat jokes

“We play the same songs every night,” James Blunt told his audience early into the gig. He sounded almost as bored as the crowd looked.

Moments earlier, he’d also managed to inadvertently insult half of them as his deadpan humour didn’t quite result in the gag he’d hoped for. “You guys up there in the balcony… you’ve made a major cock-up,” he said. “The people on the floor are going to have a way better night…” The singer probably hasn’t struggled in an online ticket queue for a while, but those in the upper tier certainly had.

In an upbeat opening, Blunt put all his energy into Heart To Heart and I’ll Take Everything. He encouraged the crowd to stand; a third did. His observation that “now Adele has given up music, I’m all you’ve got left” was sobering.

Although Blunt has reinvented himself on Twitter with his self-deprecation and scathing insults, his everyman routine grated last night, not least because it was so frequent between songs. You’re Beautiful and Same Mistake received the most praise from the audience — Blunt’s ability to deliver his classics is still his greatest strength. Other songs veered between forgettable middle-of-the-road guitar rock and bland balladry.

He also ventured into politics on an anti-Trump song. As he sang “I built the words into the song/I hope someone is singing along”, it was hard to think of a more insipid protest piece.

Blunt ended where he began: “We play the same f***ing songs every night,” he laughed. Then, as the encore flatly began, he said: “I’m going to play you something truly miserable now.”