THE singer James Blunt will this week attempt to overcome sharp attacks from American critics and win the hearts of US music industry executives and celebrities.

With the help of the most expensive marketing campaign for a British pop singer in the US since Robbie Williams, Blunt will perform a “showcase” concert before celebrities and record executives in Los Angeles for the Grammys, the Oscars of the music world.

Industry insiders estimate that Custard, Blunt’s record company, has spent up to £1m preparing the way for the show at the House of Blues on Sunset Strip. They believe it is make or break time in the US for the former Household Cavalry officer turned troubadour.

Though the floppy-haired singer has been selling steadily in America, some critics have savaged his high voice and sugary teen appeal. Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times, the city’s most influential rock critic, is likely to be at the concert. He has dismissed Blunt’s music as “empty romantic devotion . . . meant to be unabashedly heartfelt (but) unbearably saccharine”.

Blunt’s notices elsewhere have been mixed: Rolling Stone magazine said he was for people who find Coldplay abrasive, but “possessed of a beautiful voice that bleeds sincerity at haemophiliac levels”.

Yet many people have ignored such barbs. Blunt already has devoted fans in the US, many of them teenagers like the two girls who wept in Tower Records in west Los Angeles last week upon learning that his next album, The Bedlam Sessions, will not be released until next week.

“We could not get tickets for the House of Blues, and now we cannot get the album until after St Valentine’s Day. It’s not fair,” wailed one.

At his concert he is expected to be introduced by the actress Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy. She was an early fan: he recorded a version of Goodbye My Lover on a piano in the bathroom of her Hollywood Hills home. Fisher has written his official website biography under the pseudonym The Landlady.

The concert sold out in seconds, and its guest list is stuffed with celebrities, including Mariah Carey and Joss Stone, who are both due to perform at the Grammys. The actor Tom Hanks, who is said to have been introduced to Blunt’s music by his children, is also expected.

But it will be the radio programmers and concert organisers who Blunt will have to impress if he is to become Britain’s biggest musical export since Coldplay broke through four years ago.

“Blunt sings a good song but what marks him out is his story,” said a record company talent scout last week.

It is a saga familiar in Britain but still fresh in the US: how the scion of a military family served as a British officer during the Kosovo civil war, driving around in a tank with his guitar strapped to the back of it.

And how he grew sick of violence, and channelled his anguish into pain-filled songs such as No Bravery, as well as more standard romantic ballads such as last summer’s hit You’re Beautiful.

Having become a star across Europe Blunt is daunted neither by the critics nor the House of Blues audience. “It’s not about money or fame,” he said. “It’s about enjoying it; so if it takes me a couple of months or a couple of years (to make it in the US), that’ll be as it is.”

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