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To be blunt: James Blunt sucks.

(Ha HA! See what I did there? With the making fun of his name? I am freakin’ SLICK, people, and you need to RECOGNIZE.)

His new song “You’re Beautiful” has been floating around in the top 20 for several weeks now, and I have to admit, at first, I thought it was a pretty decent song. Ol’ Jimmy has an interesting voice, not really like anything else I’ve heard, and the song has a melodic quality that appealed to me. Only recently have I come to the realization that his voice is not so much “interesting” as “flat-out sucky” (or in the parlance of this electronic age, Teh Suxx0r), and when I listened a little closer to the lyrics, I realized that whoever penned them (young Mr. Blunt, I’m assuming) 1) couldn’t write a good lyric with Jackson Browne whispering them in his ear, and 2) has some serious issues with stalking that he should probably work out with a psychological specialist.

And, oddliest of all, he starts out the song by randomly singing the first line of the first verse in the middle of the introduction. This is a classic move that Sarah and I call the “Emily V,” after a good friend of ours. Whenever a song comes on of which Emily is fond, she has the amusing habit of immediately beginning to sing the lyrics of the song during the introduction, long before the singer actually starts a verse. It’s only annoying the first 307 times. James “The Chr0n1c” Blunt does the same thing; about halfway through the chorus he inexplicably sings “My life is brilliant” and then just stops and lets the introduction continue for 8 more bars before the drums come in and the verse starts in earnest.

Let’s examine the first verse:

My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I’m sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won’t lose no sleep on that,
‘Cause I’ve got a plan.

Now, I would think here would be a good place to actually outline his “plan,” but James launches straight into the chorus. The second verse (which we will get to shortly, worry not) makes no mention of it either. I’m led to assume that he’s intending to spend the rest of his days riding the same train at the same time over and over again until he spots her without her man. I’m envisioning bizarre fan-fiction in which she only rode that train once, while going to visit an art museum with her brother, because she’s actually from Reading, PA and was just in town for a college trip, but James doesn’t know that, so of course after 10 years of riding the same train he decides to expand his search and starts riding random trains 24 hours a day, never the leaving the subway, subsisting off of the discarded falafel and bagel remnants of others, until one day at the age of 57 he gets accosted by another bum who doesn’t want to share his train and stabs him with a polished piece of broken stemware he keeps for such purposes.

Clearly I’ve given this a terrifying amount of thought. Definitely more than James “Philly” Blunt gave it. Verse the second (we’ll get to the chorus momentarily), and let’s break it down a bit:

Yeah, she caught my eye,
As we walked on by.

What sort of retarded subway is this in which people are wandering aimlessly through the cars?

She could see from my face that I was,
Flying high!

I think this is the stupidest lyric in the song. Either he means that he had literally just smoked a blunt (ha HA!) in the subway station bathroom (the non-radio lyrics seem to reinforce this idea, since apparently on the CD he says “f-ing high”), or he thinks that she can tell from the look on his face that he fell in love instantly and has achieved euphoria as a result. If I saw somebody on a subway with that look on their face, I’d assume they had a stroke.

He clearly just needed something to rhyme with “by.” Let me suggest a few alternates: “But with a dude by her side, why would I even try?” or “As we squeezed in the car, my hand brushed her thigh” or “and my wang pointed up, straight up to the sky.” All of these would be better options.

And I don’t think that I’ll see her again,
But we shared a moment that will last till the end.

The end of what? The train ride? The day? The song? The world? JAMES BLUNT, YOU ARE PISSING ME OFF.

Finally, let’s examine the chorus a wee bit:

You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful, it’s true.
I saw you face in a crowded place,
And I don’t know what to do,
‘Cause I’ll never be with you.

Perhaps: go home, have a drink, maybe engage in a little light onanism, go to sleep? Personally, from the tone of the song, I get the feeling that this guy falls in love with random chicks he sees at least twice a day. It’s almost pathological.

The final chorus repeats:

You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful, it’s true.

Okay, I get the picture. Frickin’ Helen of Troy, in the subway, probably riding around with a guy that looks like Matthew McConaughey’s better looking younger brother.

There must be an angel with a smile on her face,
When she thought up that I should be with you.

Wait, what? I had assumed, from the first verse, that the girl he saw WAS the angel. Now I’m really confused. Were there two angels? Is one of them cherubim and one seraphim? This song needs a frickin’ third verse, of great length, to explain this, and maybe also a fourth to detail the “track down the hot chick I saw on the subway and get her digits” plan he mentioned a while back.

But it’s time to face the truth,
I will never be with you.

This is the smartest thing he says in the song. Even more frustrating, after the final verse, the song just sort of stops, like he couldn’t come up with a good ending.

Which happens sometimes.