Blunt faces battle over royalties

James Blunt

His life has been beautiful - until now. With millions of dollars rolling in, a pair of Brit awards to his credit and the satisfaction of cracking the United States market, James Blunt's star has been on a seemingly endless rise.

But yesterday it emerged it could be payback time for the singer, known for his dreamy ballads.

Royalties on six songs from his debut album Back to Bedlam have been frozen in a row about who wrote what, as his early mentor claimed he had been "betrayed" by the singer.

Lukas Burton, a record producer and songwriter who says he groomed the former Army officer for stardom, is claiming credit for several of the tracks that have made Blunt one of the world's biggest stars.

Blunt sold 2.3 million copies of Back to Bedlam last year, making him the biggest-selling artist in Britain, and six million copies worldwide. His syrupy signature tune You're Beautiful made him the first British artist to top the US charts for nine years when it went to number one this month.

But Burton now wants his contribution to Blunt's success recognised financially. The Performing Rights Society confirmed it had suspended payments on a number of the songs from Back to Bedlam while the claims over the disputed tracks are probed.

A spokeswoman for Blunt hit back yesterday, saying: "Traditionally, when a record is this massive, everyone wants to claim credit for its success. This is no different."

Burton has now posted early versions of the songs on a website to back his assertion that he was involved in the songs at an early stage.

The 35-year-old producer was introduced to the singer by Blunt's then girlfriend Dixie Chassay in 2001, and they soon began working together. It was through Ms Chassay's family connection with actress Carrie Fisher that Blunt later moved to Los Angeles for several months to work on his debut album and forged a strong bond with the Star Wars actress.

Burton said: "His stuff was crude, occasionally laughably direct, and betrayed his relative lack of musicianship or discernible influence."

But the two hit it off and began working together, developing songs and arrangements in Los Angeles. They completed a number of tracks before Blunt returned to Britain and, after a few weeks of regular communication by phone and email, Burton said the relationship soon began to cool. Blunt eventually told him he had a new manager.

Burton called it "an outright betrayal, a huge waste of my time, resources and energy".

"It wasn't so much that I was angry, just completely gutted," the producer said. He also claimed he had been assured the songs they had worked on would not appear on any future record. "It turns out that James wasn't quite as good as his 'Queen and country' word, and three of his songs we worked on closely together are in there among the 10 nuggets," he said.

Blunt, 28, has had a period of phenomenal success after You're Beautiful began to pick up airplay and his album sales went through the roof. He had a slow start with just 482 copies of Back to Bedlam being sold during its first week on sale in 2004.

For five weeks in the summer of 2005 he simultaneously topped the UK singles and album charts with You're Beautiful and Back to Bedlam.

Traditionally the music industry has been littered with rows about songwriting credits, leading to the old adage: "Where there's a hit, there's a writ."

John Lennon, George Harrison and Led Zeppelin are among the artists who ended up in legal wrangles over songwriting disputes.


That's my song!

Famous songwriting copyright disputes include:
* George Harrison was accused of plagiarising My Sweet Lord from the Chiffons' He's So Fine.
* Robbie Williams was judged to have copied a lyric by Woody Guthrie for his song Jesus in a Camper Van - and was ordered to hand over a quarter of the income from that track.

- INDEPENDENT