James Blunt And The Great Royalties Arse-Up

Singer/songwriter James Blunt has had royalties for six of the songs from his debut album Back To Bedlam suspended due to a dispute with a producer who claims he helped Blunt in his ascension from bloke no-one was paying attention to in the hope he’d go away, to the fully paid-up member of the Axis of Evil that he is today.

Lukas Burton’s claims are that he worked with the Clunt at the start of his career, but was ditched when other people starting noticing James Blunt’s commercial potential. After not initially rating Blunt because of his lack of musicianship, he claims he then invested time into developing James Blunt’s ‘talent’.

Presumably Lukas Burton was distracted for a while, so forgot to make this
claim until James Blunt (CDs) became the first UK artist to score a US number one
in nine years. One may ask what kind of a sick individual claims credit
for James Blunt in the first place?

Better to suffer in poverty than drive
around in your chauffeur-driven limo whilst people point accusingly to
a whispered soundtrack of “he’s the one.” But then consider that Mr
Burton was also responsible for the career of Dido, and his reputation
goes from being one of money-grabbing chancer to evil genius.

hecklerspray should point out that there’s nothing incriminating
suggested by the fact that the MCPS-PRS Alliance have suspended
royalties since this is standard procedure for disputes such as these.
James Blunt’s publicist made a brief statement:

"Traditionally, when a record
is this massive, everyone wants to claim credit for its success. This
is no different."

Read more:

Blunt faces royalties battle - ITV 

[story by Simon Sharp]