Essex FM has reacted to James Blunt’s suggestion that anyone who doesn’t like his music being played on the radio should simply switch it off. The station has announced that from today listeners will no longer hear ‘You’re Beautiful’ and ‘Goodbye My Lover’.
Programme Controller Chris Cotton: “Quite often there will be popular artists that people are starting to grow weary of. This time, the number of specific comments about James Blunt were more than we have ever seen for one particular artist. The amount of feedback is enormous, so it looks like there’ll be a pretty long-term ban. This does tend to happen when artists reach a certain level of popularity, when it becomes wall-to-wall coverage.”
The GCap Media station said it was responding to recent audience research, which revealed that listeners had tired of his songs. Last week at the Ivor Novello awards ‘You’re Beautiful’ was voted international hit of the year and whilst accepting his award he commented: “To all those bastards who don’t like my music – you’re all adults, you can switch your radio off.”
Will other stations follow in the footsteps of Essex FM? Let’s hope so.