Songfacts®:

• This is the first single by British singer James Blunt, from his third album Some Kind of Trouble. Blunt teamed up with American songwriters Ryan Tedder (Bleeding Love, Halo) and Steve Robson ( Please Don't Let Me Go, What About Now) to pen the track.
• This party song, about "singing 'Billie Jean' and mixing vodka and caffeine," marks the first time Blunt has written with two other songwriters in the same room or started a song from scratch.
• Blunt penned this tune as he was "tired of writing self-pitying songs." In an interview for Scottish television channel STV, Blunt stated: "After the last tour I tried writing at the piano, but I was repeating myself, writing sad songs about poor old me. I needed to get away from music for a while. My new songs, most prominently 'Stay the Night', are more optimistic. One thing I did learn is that your artistic credibility goes out the window when you have a big record. 'You're Beautiful' meant something to me, but to most people, it's a song they sing when they're drunk."
• Blunt explained the song's meaning in an interview with PopEater: "I wrote it with Steve Robson, my producer, and Ryan Tedder from OneRepublic, and if you check out the credits as well, you'll see we wrote it with Bob Marley - I thought he was dead. We were in California, and it sounds like we're all around a campfire. What it basically was three guys who all pulled out our guitars and wrote a fun song that describes being in California - it kind of wrote itself. It's about hanging out with your friends and not wanting the night to end."
  
  Confused by Blunt's reference to Bob Marley? The lyrics, "Just like the song on our radio set / We'll share the shelter of my single bed," are a reference to the Jamaican legend's hit tune "Is This Love." Hence Marley's credit as a co-writer.
• Ray Kay directed the song's music video. Blunt told PopEater: "We did it on a beach in Malibu, which I was happy for because I've been in some very painful videos where they've thrown me off cliffs and set me on fire. This one is just hanging out with some good-looking people on the beach."
• Unlike Blunt's previous albums, Some Kind of Trouble was written in the studio. The British singer explained why in an interview with Gibson.com: "That resulted from the great bond and great working relationship with [co-writer] Steve Robson. Rather than writing songs on my own at home, and collecting them before going into the studio, he and I would talk about what I had been up to, and write a song based on that. Once we were sure we had honed the song into something we were confident in, and proud of, we would record a demo, and let it lie as we moved on to another song. Later we built the demos up into what became the finished album."