Anyone like him, you know the lad with the gravely voice? If James Blunt and Chris Martin had a child, thats what he'd look like, guy? I like him, the new album, 'undiscovered' is real good!!!

He's bein referred to as "the new James Blunt", which isn't likely to help his career any!!:rolleyes:

James the Second sells his soul short

 

Another year, another boyish balladeer. Master Morrison is a step up on Mr Blunt, but this show proves he's not quite the real deal

 

James Morrison

University of London Union, London WC1

 

James Morrison arrives onstage at this packed, humid student union show on a thermal of excitement and praise. His has been the voice of the summer, in those quarters Lily Allen's couldn't reach. 'You Give Me Something', Morrison's breakout single, is proving almost as inescapable as 'You're Beautiful', the last love song sung with the aid of an acoustic guitar by a man called James.

 

Morrison's debut album Undiscovered went to number one on release a month ago. He's at the head of a pack of slightly tousled, tastefully soulful singer-songwriters demanding the attention of the post-teen record buyer. Corinne Bailey Rae (with whom Morrison toured) is holding up the lady end of things; Paolo Nutini is the other young scruff vying for the same old music market.

 

Dressed down in baggy jeans and a rumpled black shirt that wilts further in the heat, he looks a little like Chris Martin, back when the Coldplay singer still had woolly, pre-famous hair. Morrison's appeal rests on a kind of trompe l'oeil. He has the appearance of a doe-eyed 21-year-old whose sessions with a stylist are continuing, but has a middle-aged soul man's vocal style: blacker and more lived in than his life. It's the same trick that made fellow West Country soul-singer Joss Stone the toast of 2003. But when, you wonder, will record companies find a top-flight grime MC trapped inside the body of a Minnesotan boy scout?

 

The voice suggests a youth misspent behind bike sheds, dyeing Morrison's vocal chords yellow, but the truth is more moving. Morrison had whooping cough in infancy, one of a string of troubles that beset the singer. His mother's council house burnt down; he used to make ends meet by busking. It got so bad, he even applied to be on Fame Academy

 

Veteran soul producer Jerry Wexler has said of the voice: 'Hear it once and you will forever recognise it', the most resonant of the many plaudits that have come his way. For his part, Morrison has talked a lot in interviews about passion, soulfulness and authenticity, the kind of buzzwords guaranteed to get the shadowy taste-making cabal of Radio 2 (most of whom have pimped Morrison hard) all moist-eyed and bushy-tailed.

 

Tonight, Morrison delivers if not passion, soulfulness and authenticity, then at least an approximation of them, belting out his songs on a slick of spittle, and stamping his foot a lot. There are strings of oversized lightbulbs hanging atmospherically at the back of this soul karaoke, suggesting an era - Otis Redding's perhaps - when they didn't have whizz-bang stage effects. The only downside is that when the bulbs light up red, they look a little like deflated balloons at the fag end of a party.

 

Morrison excels at the dramatic bluster often mistaken for soul. He's less good on quietly planting a pearl of succour somewhere between your pancreas and spleen, which is what soul does when it's working. Songs like 'You Give Me Something', or the Louis Armstrong-quoting follow-up single 'Wonderful World' are adept and classicist tonight, without sounding remotely classic.

 

Too often, Morrison's songs resort to a bank of words, rhymes and sentiments rife with cliches ('Oh life can be strange,' ponders 'If The Rain Must Fall', 'good and bad in so many ways'). Even more pertinent is that these tunes were co-written with a coterie of professional songwriters who should know better. Sometimes a half-decent song does penetrate the fug of cab-driver philosophising. 'Call the Police' (co-written by Eg White, who wrote Will Young's 'Leave Right Now') rounds off the encore potently. The obliquely hurt and angry 'Letter', on the surface a break-up song, but in fact addressed to his mother, rightly gets some of the loudest cheers of the evening.

 

From the point of view of the ticket buyer, it's all a rousing success. Morrison, a little nervous and rushed and gabbly between songs, plays his hit album with few departures; the front rows get sweated on. 'One Last Chance' has a little dub guitar not audible on the record. Morrison's effusive keyboard player Nikolai conjures up skeins of ersatz strings and plays a melodica too.

 

By the end, people are singing Morrison's lyrics back at him, and a woman with a Stereophonics logo tattooed across her back nearly falls off the balcony in excitement.

 

There is no doubting Morrison's commitment or energy. He has the kind of gauche charisma and underdog backstory that makes his success just about bearable: no one will hate him like some hate James Blunt.

 

But Morrison has no grasp of subtlety: in his mouth, everything is a crescendo. The best bit of the gig comes when he goes off, then teasingly waggles a sweaty towel from the wings before coming back for an encore.

 

It's the kind of comic, spontaneous, authentic gesture his time onstage sorely lacked.

 

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1868691,00.html

He shouldn't be compared to James Blunt, because this guy can actually sing. I quite like him!

Youuu give meee somethiiiing :P

Like his voice!

f*** james blunt, james morrison's got a freakin awesome voice. just got undescovered album, and this seriously kicks ass. this guy's gonna be big (though he's actually big right now)

^agree

 

i more like james morrison, he's definitely shouldn't be compared wiht james blunt because of their names

I have the CD, he rocks and that he was being compared to James Blunt isn't good at all.

i love this guy's music

I was quite surprised when I saw "James Morrison" quoted as cast of '24' last night :P

 

British singer-songwriter has the goods

 

 

Despite the album title, you should be hearing a lot more from this young U.K. singer-songwriter by year's end, if there's any justice.

 

Looking like the younger brother of Coldplay's Chris Martin, James Morrison has recorded an incredibly good debut. For proof positive, listen to him with just his guitar on the song "Better Man." While his lyric writing is nothing special, his singing is so engaging and self-assured. Fellow youngsters from across the Atlantic pond, like James Blunt and Daniel Powter, have nothing over Morrison. His is the kind of voice that can only get better with age.

 

The album's two breakout tracks that have already made him a rising star in his home country, "You Give Me Something" and "Wonderful World," are equal stunners. The former has an infectiously buoyant feel as Morrison channels the Memphis groove of Al Green, complete with string and horn arrangements. "Wonderful World," with its heart-bursting sentiment, sounds a bit like early Rod Stewart, when Rod the Mod's raspy voice was at its best.

 

With Morrison picking up the vocal inflections of Stevie Wonder on "The Last Goodbye," you'd think the young singer is too much of a chameleon to put his own stamp on his songs. Still, you can hear his dynamic voice punching through his influences. A song like the quiet shuffle "One Last Chance" is a portent of things to come.

 

Morrison admits he had a pretty rough time growing up with an alcoholic father, but music helped ease things. He listened to his mother's record collection and later picked up a guitar with the prompting of an uncle when he turned 13.

 

Listening to such soul icons as Wonder, Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye has helped him focus all that emotion of his upbringing into a powerful and still-developing singing voice.

 

"I'm not lost ... just undiscovered," goes a lyric in the title track. Well, not for long, I hope.

 

http://starbulletin.com/2007/03/27/features/story02.html

My life is brilliant, my love is pure...

 

I've listened to the WW album by JM, whilst competent/dynamic, it lacks the LOVE AT FIRST LISTENING IMPACT of Blunt's RAW Back To Bedlam, which I still listen to with the same adoration two years after it was released. I don't think JM possesses a break through hit (perhaps The Pieces Don’t Fit Anymore: but that took many listens & three months to sink in) that Blunt had. Rest assured all you Blunt naysayers, WATCHOUT cos if you've heard his unreleased songs on P2P, he will blow open the musical universe with his upcoming revelation that will be His sophomore album. PS Thankyou to the person who started this post with an amazing attention grabber joking if Martin & Blunt had a child, the offspring spawned would look like JM... :)

HE'S HOT!!! :wink3:

 

 

I like the song... I heard/ saw the video on VH1 the other night..... I'm diggin' it......

 

 

and he does resemble Chris Martin!!!

^ I disagree about the Chris Martin part.

But a friend of mine said he was lipsingin' at a Dutch show called Jensen.. dunno if that's true.

 

oh come on!! look at the resemblance!!! I think he looks more like Chris in the

'Shiver' video... especially in that picture... but, I couldn't find a still shot from the video... :(

I don't see it. :P

lol I think its in the mouth and eye area....

In intimate setting, Morrison is sublime

 

 

CAMBRIDGE -- Tiny T.T. the Bear's Place seemed an unlikely club to find 3-million-album-selling British pop-soul singer James Morrison performing.

 

Given that his debut, "Undiscovered," hit the Billboard charts at No. 24 upon release in March, it was unsurprising that his show there on Tuesday night sold out weeks ago. Morrison is already booked to play the Paradise in July, so T.T.'s intimate setting, given Morrison's sweetly sublime hourlong set, was an absolute treat.

 

Let's dispense with the fumbling comparison to that other British James: everyone's whipping boy James Blunt , with whom Morrison possibly shares naught but a name and a keen intelligence. As to resembling Coldplay's Chris Martin , another heartthrob Morrison's been compared to; really, the slightly built 22-year-old looked more like a cute, hawkish Bob Dylan circa "Highway 61 Revisited." Do his looks matter? The girls issuing stadium-size screams thought so.

 

Performing with a pianist, who also added some cool turns on harmonica, and proving no slouch on acoustic guitar, Morrison included a telling cover of Van Morrison's hymnlike "And It Stoned Me." His old-school blue-eyed soul roots were showing. But Morrison is less classic and more plain classy, avoiding trite vocal theatrics and nimbly tucking his sandpaper-rubbed voice around a lyric.

 

He chatted in between songs, remarking that the Fenway, as the Red Sox played their home opener, was "the craziest [expletive] place I've ever been." True that. He also told a story about a mad drunk on a bus for whom he may or may not have written "Wonderful World," a gorgeous, rousing version of which followed the tale.

 

He sailed and soared through "You Give Me Something," which the audience clearly adored, joyously singing along on the catchy chorus. The elegant, dramatic finale, "The Last Goodbye," which was backed only by piano and stung with palpable heartache, was all his, though. Accompanied by a guitarist, California singer-songwriter Jessie Baylin added the odd vocal mannerism -- a slight yelp here, a jazzy bent there -- to her impressive opening set. But, mostly, she kept things simple and was all the more powerful for it.

 

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2007/04/12/in_intimate_setting_morrison_is_sublime/

I like his voice but I don't like the songs at all.