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Upper-class hunk burns up the charts

Brit balladeer James Blunt was a teen at the exclusive school where Harry Potter films were shot before hearing rock.

James Blunt sounds like John Cleese doing a parody of an upper-class British twit. But the chart-topping Blunt, who's got a background to match the posh accent, makes no effort to disguise his pedigree.

There are no fake lad-isms or attempts to notch up street cred by feigning enthusiasm for canned beer, fries and public transportation, like Oasis' Gallagher brothers. The 28-year-old Blunt, who shares Elton John's management team, was born well and plans to continue living that way.

A former soldier and member of the British Household Cavalry who guarded the queen mother's coffin at her funeral, Blunt has struck a nerve around the world. His sensitive, ballad-strewn debut, Back to Bedlam , is the second-biggest seller of the last 12 months, after Coldplay's X&Y. The disc has cracked the top 10 on Billboard's albums chart, passing 900,000 in sales, and it's among the top downloaded albums on iTunes. It's hard to get through a day without hearing the single You're Beautiful .

"I hope people don't start saying, "Oh no, not him again,"' Blunt said. "I love having a song that seems to be affecting large numbers of people, but I don't want them to begin to hate me for it."

Blunt's gravelly voice, green eyes and unshaven, shaggy-haired look has carried him into an estrogen-friendly zone, along with Damien Rice, David Gray and John Mayer. And he's been earning rave reviews on the road. The New York Times noted, "Strumming his acoustic guitar or slinging it to the side, Mr. Blunt has an authoritative charisma."

Along with the love ballads on Back to Bedlam , Blunt penned Cry and No Bravery , songs inspired by his four-year stint in the British Army, during which he served in war-torn Kosovo. He jokes that he's been shot at more times than 50 Cent.

"(The army) was a family tradition, and whether I felt entirely comfortable with it, I went and did my job, and I loved it," he says. "I made some great friends. But the life I've got now is much better."

Born in Tidworth, Hampshire, to an army family that goes back generations, Blunt was sent to boarding school. He didn't hear rock music until he was a teenager at the exclusive Harrow School, where Harry Potter films were shot.

After Harrow, he went to Bristol University on an army scholarship to study aerospace engineering, then was shipped off to the Sandhurst military academy, where Prince Harry started last summer. In 1999, he served six months in Kosovo and had earlier protected the queen as a mounted guard.

"One thing I've become quite comfortable with from those years is not having a permanent place to live," Blunt says. "Right now, I have all my stuff in storage, and I'm living on a bus, basically. But I love it. It's a bit like the army, being surrounded by your mates."

[Last modified February 14, 2006, 02:45:31]