You're Beautiful, turning ugly

The long-running dispute between James Blunt and former producer Lukas Burton is almost certain to end up in court, as EMI and Blunt seek a High Court judgement on Burton's claims that he wrote a bunch of songs on Blunt's first album. Burton is claiming responsibility for writing You're Beautiful, but then who would?

Burton is sharing his side of the relationship with Blunt with anyone who'll listen:

"His stuff was crude, occasionally laughably direct, and betrayed his relative lack of musicianship or discernible influence," he wrote. "But I kind of loved the guy. He was great looking in a short-arsed Tom Cruise-y kind of way and he had this girlish singing style that brilliantly offset his back story." He added: "It would probably be an overstatement to say that in terms of his professional musical aspirations James had nothing going on, but he definitely had next to nothing going on."

Burton goes on to describe the moment when Blunt took the songs he'd buffed to a new management and cut him out as a moment of "abject treachery".

In public, team Blunt are doing little more than confirming the existence of the claim.

[Thanks to Jim McCabe for the link]

Blunt wants more money

James Blunt has issued a high court summons to try and get the issue of royalties for Back to Bedlam sorted. Since Lukas Burton claimed that he'd been diddled out of a proper production credit on the album, the flow of cash from the record has been frozen. Now Blunt wants to get things sorted.

The High Court, of course, might decide to keep the cash for the government, as why should anyone profit from torture?