James Blunt is back — and he didn’t just drop a new album. He took over an entire airport to launch it.

Airplane Mode, Blunt’s eighth studio album, is out today, Friday, Nov. 6, via Atlantic Records. The 12-track record, running about 42 minutes, is his first studio album since Who We Used to Be in 2023 — and for millennials who wore out “You’re Beautiful” in the mid-2000s, it feels like a proper homecoming.

The album arrives led by singles “Tastes Like Summer” and “Weight of It All,” with “Circles” also in the mix. It’s the sound of an artist who knows exactly who he is: wry, romantic and unbothered by trends, two decades after he first soundtracked everyone’s heartbreak.

But the launch is pure Blunt. To promote the album, he filmed promo videos inside the terminal at London Luton Airport — with actual airport staff appearing on camera alongside him. It’s a fittingly on-the-nose stunt for an album called Airplane Mode, and very much in keeping with the self-aware humor that has made him one of pop’s most beloved social media presences.

The timing is no accident, either. Blunt was a finalist on series 2 of Celebrity Traitors in October, winning over a whole new audience — and reminding the rest of us why we loved him in the first place. The millennial-nostalgia-meets-reality-TV crossover is complete: the “You’re Beautiful” guy is now also the Traitors guy, and he’s got a new album to prove it.

Blunt will take Airplane Mode on the road in 2027, with a UK & Ireland arena tour running March 26 through April 8, plus a European tour also announced for next year.

Stream Airplane Mode now on Apple Music — and put your phone on airplane mode while you listen. He’d want it that way.

Photo: James Blunt portrait by Noemi Núñez Jiménez, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).