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[2.80]
Katherine St Asaph: Ever thought Colbie Caillat was too eclectic?
[2]
Kat Stevens: The UK fulfils its mandatory quota of cod reggae #1 singles for the decade! Unfortunately for Olly ‘I’ve Nicked Ne-Yo’s Hat’ Murs, the last example was Lily Allen’s awesome “Smile”, which takes some beating.
[2]
Mark Sinker: The curiously gimcrack reggae seems to be a Heath Robinson contraption to shake out the tiny precious flecks and shrugs in Olly M’s voice, but he’s evidently comfy with meat-and-potatoes neutrality, and stays pretty unstirred. The backbeat chunks out solid as an old-style cash-register drawer.
[5]
John Seroff: Genial beer commercial fluff. I gather this guy is a UK reality show type? Makes sense, he sounds the type: inoffensive, plinky, replaceable. La la la la la means it’s boring.
[5]
Alex Ostroff: Olly Murs (who I know nothing about, but will henceforth cause me to exclaim “Polymers!” at every potential juncture) presents us with a song whose production sounds suspiciously like Lily Allen’s “Smile”. Lily’s wry sensibility and biting wit undercut any potential for her breezy vocals to devolve into schmaltz. Olly, however, embraces the saccharine, to the detriment of Tesco shoppers everywhere.
[2]
Martin Skidmore: I was pretty puzzled at his getting to second in last year’s X Factor, and I haven’t been hotly anticipating his recording career. This clodhopping reggae-lite single with dreary singing (I think he’d like to be Will Young, but he’s nowhere near as gifted) does absolutely nothing to change that.
[2]
Iain Mew: Interesting that after years of Cowell and co struggling to know what to do with even X Factor winners, Leona and Alexandra’s continuing careers have now been accompanied by a number of successful losers not seen since the days when people would buy literally anything by someone who had been on Pop Idol (exhibit A: Sam and Mark). The secret to it is that JLS, Diana Vickers and now Olly Murs have all done it by finding their own niches rather than just from the power of TV. In Olly’s case, this niche is combining a total lack of life or personality with Will Young style smooth pop (not exactly the most challenging of genres to begin with), but at least the song feels like it’s around because someone actually likes it.
[2]
Renato Pagnani: Some songs sound like every song you’ve ever heard, and such is the case with this — but here’s it’s a very, very bad thing. Cringe-worthy reaching-for-rhymes songwriting, dull melodies, instrumentation that sounds like it was submerged in molasses; I understand why this dude had to resort to begging for people to listen to him.
[2]
Chuck Eddy: If anybody cares, Olly also apparently does a song called “This One’s For The Girls” which is sadly not the Martina McBride number, though the mere idea makes me want to try hers in karaoke sometime. As for this one, I guess it’s, uh, reggae? And pretty bloody bad at it. Though it could be worse, like maybe if he was American.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Ain’t nobody gonna break his stride, ain’t nobody hold him down. And he wears a hat.
[3]