WATCH: James Blunt appears on Global’s The Morning Show.
TORONTO — James Blunt isn’t about to give his haters the last word.
Rather than ignore the vitriol directed at him on Twitter, the British singer regularly responds with witty comments.
“My record label told me to stop doing it,” Blunt said during an interview on Global’s The Morning Show.
He hasn’t.
So when someone tweeted recently that “@JamesBlunt looks like my left testicle,” Blunt replied: “Then you need to see a doctor.”
And when someone took to Twitter to report “James Blunt is playing in the gym. This is unacceptable,” his response was: “I’m not playing. This is a serious workout.”
Blunt, 40, said it’s unfortunate the media picks up on so much of what people tweet.
“They focus on one guy who’s written five words in the shadows in his bedroom, probably with his trousers around his ankles, and thinking his opinion is so very important,” Blunt said.
“We need to learn to laugh at ourselves and laugh at anyone who thinks it’s all valuable.”
Blunt said the social media tool should be taken with a very big grain of salt.
“We take Twitter so seriously and we’ve got to understand it is just people’s opinions and people shouldn’t necessarily think their opinions are so important.”
Blunt — whose breakthrough 2005 single “You’re Beautiful” led to five Grammy nominations — is currently on tour promoting Moon Landing, his fourth studio album.
The singer said he decided to go back to basics.
“I wanted to do it for myself rather than treat it like a job,” he said. “Go back to being a musician again and write something much more personal.”
The result? “The audience seem to engage with it more because they can sense it’s a bit more genuine,” said Blunt.
Born James Blount into a military family, the singer served four years in the British armed forces and spent six months in 1998 training near Medicine Hat, Alberta.
“I worked with the Canadian army and they were a really sensible army to work with,” Blunt recalled. “You need common sense when things are chaotic around you, and they were calm. It was a pleasure to work with them.”
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