Blunty continues to plumb the depths of wrist-slashingly dull ballads with his newest single, Carry You Home. You know the worst bit? This song is supposed to be special to him and yet he still sings it in that strange falsetto that has me reaching for knitting needles to stick in my eardrums. (Don’t try that at home people, just call your local branch of the James Blunt Is Making Me Suicidal Society)

The video features Blunt travelling across country to deliver a dead army mates belongings to the guy’s wife/girlfriend. He stops off for a contemplative pint, then somehow breaks into the house while she’s out staring at the ocean. Well, he doesn’t exactly ring the doorbell, does he?

Then he basically throws the stuff at the poor grieving woman and stomps off across country as she breaks down in despair on the cliff edge. What a charmer.

Now, I actually went and looked up the lyrics for this song, and there’s nothing to reference Captain James Hillier Blount’s stint in the armed forces. So ask yourself – is Blunty cashing in on his military association with this video? What’s the point? As an Olympic-grade cynic, you can guess my opinion.

On the positive side, if you removed Blunt from Carry You Home, you’d have a beautiful instrumental. Shame he had to go and ruin it.

After the relative pop success that was 1973, James Bland er, Blunt is back to his usual form. That is, caterwauling empty lyrics over a nice acoustic backing.

The problem is rarely with the music, it’s the tone of Blunt’s voice, the mundanity of these songs. They almost all seem to blend into one big lovelorn symphony. And from the moment a James Blunt song begins to the moment it ends, you find yourself wishing you were deaf for the duration.

The fact of the matter is, if you release this type of music too often, the meaning of the song is lost. You spend more time trying to work out what other James Blunt song it sounds like instead of enjoying it.

In the fantasy music industry that exists in my head, the clock is already ticking on James Blunt’s career. He’s got the talent, he just refuses to use it to write decent songs. Thumbs down.

When last we saw James Blunt, he was diving stark naked into what looked like a freezing cold ocean. He’d just dropped You’re Beautiful on an unsuspecting world and, sensing that there’d be an all-male lynch mob out to get him for releasing such muck, he’s laid low for a respectable amount of time.

Which brings us to his latest single, 1973.

Ask anyone, and they’ll grudgingly agree that this is Blunt’s best track to date. It’s certainly a welcome break from those painfully contrived ballads he was pumping out a few years ago.

1973 is a fine example of a mellow, modern love song. Co-written with Mark Batson, it’s got immediate appeal and doesn’t make you want to kill Blunt after a few listens. That’s got to be good, right?

Seriously though, there’s something beautiful about having a memory of someone rooted in a single moment: that lyric “and though time goes by I will always be/in a club with you in 1973..” is probably the best bit of the whole song.

The video’s pretty neat too, employing that age-old technique of alternating between the present and…er….1973. And who the hell’s Simona?

So, startlingly, Blunt’s latest single gets a thumbs up…

1973 is the first single from James Blunt’s new album All The Lost Souls.