December 2014 - Music
Olly Murs - Never Been Better
Not winning The X Factor hasn’t done Olly Murs much harm. He’s notched up three multiplatinum albums and four No 1 singles, and this fourth album will probably keep him in arenas. Arms will surely raise to the catchy, Hues Corporation-ish pop of Wrapped Up (with Travie McCoy) or Prince/Justin Timberlake-like Did You Miss Me? Meanwhile, Beautiful to Me sounds laboratory-designed to tug at the heartstrings of insecure teenage girls. At 30, Murs says it’s time for him to be getting “a bit more serious”, and several tracks dump the cheeky-chappy persona to bring some raw humanity to machine-polished pop. Stick With Me confesses loneliness, albeit with one eye on Row X. The piano ballad Tomorrow finds him clinging to fleeting private moments amid the craziness. Now such a star that he can “bump into” Paul Weller and write a song with him, the resulting impassioned acoustic ballad Let Me In is, by some distance, the best thing here. My rating 9/10.
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Not winning The X Factor hasn’t done Olly Murs much harm. He’s notched up three multiplatinum albums and four No 1 singles, and this fourth album will probably keep him in arenas. Arms will surely raise to the catchy, Hues Corporation-ish pop of Wrapped Up (with Travie McCoy) or Prince/Justin Timberlake-like Did You Miss Me? Meanwhile, Beautiful to Me sounds laboratory-designed to tug at the heartstrings of insecure teenage girls. At 30, Murs says it’s time for him to be getting “a bit more serious”, and several tracks dump the cheeky-chappy persona to bring some raw humanity to machine-polished pop. Stick With Me confesses loneliness, albeit with one eye on Row X. The piano ballad Tomorrow finds him clinging to fleeting private moments amid the craziness. Now such a star that he can “bump into” Paul Weller and write a song with him, the resulting impassioned acoustic ballad Let Me In is, by some distance, the best thing here. My rating 9/10.
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