Blunt is perfectly pleasant

Despite being the world's most polite pop star, he has polarised opinion like few of his contemporaries.

Some roam the streets, twitching slightly, knowing that if they hear that song one more time a killing spree will be impossible to prevent.

Others are already planning to use it for the first dance at their wedding reception, too captivated to mind the fact that it is about unrequited love and features a prominent swear word.

The song, You're Beautiful, spent weeks in the number one spot over the summer and still hovers in the top 40 even though Blunt has a new single out.

It has now joined Robbie Williams's Angels and Coldplay's Yellow in the highest echelons of the crowd-pleasing ballad. They are all songs which are so popular their composers need never sing them again - their adoring fans do it for them.

At last night's show, the first of three in Shepherd's Bush when he could easily have played Wembley, Blunt took the predictable route and sang it last. His bidding goodnight without playing it made an encore so obvious it was hardly worth clapping.

The wait was perfectly pleasant, however. Debut album Back To Bedlam has not become the second biggest seller of the year (after Coldplay) just because of a single hit. More swooning took place to the yearning strains of additional break-up ballads High and Goodbye My Lover, performed alone at the piano.

Blunt strummed an acoustic guitar while his four-piece band constructed a tasteful backdrop around tracks such as Billy and I Really Want You, a new one with a likeable shuffling beat.

Perhaps understandably after a solid year of playing these songs, everything seemed too tidy and over-rehearsed.

Only a surprising cover of Where Is My Mind? by the Pixies generated any real volume and energy, and Blunt's between-song mood-lighteners sounded as if he had tried them out plenty of times before.

Even the individual solos in the gently funky So Long, Jimmy lacked improvisation.

No Bravery, the ex-soldier's anti-war song, was the one track that made the impact its weighty subject matter deserved.

But most people were here for a simple lovesick singalong, and when You're Beautiful finally arrived, they got it.

James Blunt
O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire
Shepherd's Bush Green, W12 8TT