James Blunt Announces Upcoming 'Once Upon a Mind' Album, Releases Single 'Cold' ". Billboard . Retrieved 29 September 2019.

Austriancharts.at – James Blunt – Once Upon a Mind" (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved 7 November 2019. Offiziellecharts.de – James Blunt – Once Upon a Mind" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 31 October 2019. We’ve had a big discussion about it,” he continues, “weeks of me saying, ‘I need that’. Because it’s not just me singing a song, it’s me feeling a song, and that break [in my voice] is everything.”Zemler, Emily (2 August 2022). "James Blunt Welcomes the Highs and the Lows on Breezy Single 'Beside You' ". Rolling Stone . Retrieved 26 October 2023. Le Top de la semaine: Top Albums Fusionnes – SNEP (Week 45, 2019)" (in French). Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique . Retrieved 13 November 2019. [ permanent dead link] Still, everything wasn’t entirely rosé with The Afterlove. He mentions another of those big discussions, “not quite a row but pretty close”, about a song called “OK”, written with Steve Mac (co-writer of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You”), who also produced it. “I really didn’t enjoy where it got to, but the label said: ‘This has to go on, this is the direction, this is your first single.’ I said, ‘absolutely not’. If he was to dedicate the album to a single person, he says, it would be his father, who has stage-four chronic kidney disease and needs an O-positive kidney donor. James Blunt will release his sixth album, Once Upon a Mind, on October 25 via Custard/Atlantic Records. The album is a collaboration with several producers, including Steve Robson, Jimmy Hogarth and TMS, and the singer has teased the new music with an emotional first single titled “Cold.”

I leave [my wife] behind for 18 months at a time, and the song talks about there being an ocean between us—in the physical sense whilst I’m away on tour, in America, or Asia, or Australia, or wherever. But the message is very warm. It says, ‘Without you, I’m just cold.’ There’s definitely risks in saying such things, but the point of music is to be moved by it.” Stenzel, Wesley (23 October 2023). "James Blunt remembers his 'best friend' Carrie Fisher". Entertainment Weekly . Retrieved 26 October 2023. It is an album about the cycle of life – his father’s chronic illness; his guilt about leaving his wife to tour for months on end; the birth of his two young sons; the death of his old friend and patron Carrie Fisher – which may move his fans to tears. As it does Blunt, twice, over the course of our interview. My dad, he needs an O+ blood group kidney donor, and it’s a long wait, and life gets pretty shit in the meantime. And I suppose for me, the positive is that I have a chance to say the things I would never have otherwise said. To be able to say to him, ‘I’m not your son, you’re not my father/We’re just two grown men saying goodbye/No need to forgive, no need to forget/I know your mistakes, and you know mine.' I idolized this man throughout my childhood, but as we grew older, I realized that he had his own fallibilities, and that’s an awesome thing to see because you suddenly can become friends then. And then obviously as parents get older, the responsibility starts to weigh on the children that look after them. Although that can be painful, there’s something beautiful about it, too. We recorded this in the Guards Chapel, on Birdcage Walk [in London], where I'd been as a serving soldier, and the Trinity Boys Choir came and sang and they sounded amazing.” Dutchcharts.nl – James Blunt – Once Upon a Mind" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 2 November 2019.

But after we put the album out – and it wasn’t on it – that song still became a big hit, still with me singing on it, everywhere but the UK. Because the UK has good taste in music,” he adds with a twinkle. Hallam, Katy (27 October 2023). "BBC The One Show viewers sobbing as James Blunt shares tragic reason for new song". Birmingham Mail . Retrieved 31 October 2023. Ultratop.be – James Blunt – Who We Used to Be" (in French). Hung Medien. Retrieved 5 November 2023. Blunt’s fifth album, The Afterlove (2017), was deemed a flop, but it did well enough worldwide to keep him on the road, at arena level, for 18 months. Audiences from Bangkok to Buenos Aires were seemingly unconcerned that the breathy singer-songwriter with the light emotive touch had slalomed off-piste to dabble with electronica and beats. Dutchcharts.nl – James Blunt – Who We Used to Be" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 4 November 2023.