James Blunt

U.K. pop-rock phenomenon James Blunt was an officer in the British Army (serving four years in Kosovo) before taking the British music world by storm with his 2005 single "You're Beautiful." Blunt's shimmering, piano-based singer-songwriter approach owes as much to contemporaries Coldplay and David Gray as it does to legends like Leonard Cohen or Elton John. Whatever the ratio of new influences to old, Blunt's mixture has proven to be tremendously successful.

• rock
• pop