Well North America is finally going to get a taste of the UK star Olly Murs with a new album that combines some new material from this release and his previous album. The American release will feature the awesome and should be a massive hit "Dance With Me Tonight" but right now lets concentrate on the new album in its original form from the mighty UK.The opening cut is "Army Of Two" and its almost his best song with the Beatles influence all over it and the catchy chorus with the marching drum beats this song is a classy opening to his new album. The current single "Troublemaker" which features Flo Rida one of those guys I'm getting pretty sick of at this point. The song is good though and even with Flo Rida on it he doesn't take away from Olly's slick production and delivery of the funky little number that is a great dance song that would have sounded wonderful back in the disco era as well.
Olly is a singles artist and that's where he will continue to be even with this album. The overall listening experience is flawed because the album contains a good amount of filler. Like "Loud & Clear", "Dear Darling", "Right Place Right Time" and "Personal" all songs that aren't very strong with "Personal" a little to close to that waste of listening time Usher in sound. I do find you get Olly doing Cold Play, OneRepublic, The Script all to often and getting lost in their sounds where I don't particularly enjoy him. Then you get an R&B funk song like "Hey You Beautiful" that lacks what Bruno Mars brings to this style. Another style that Olly seems to copy and I'm again not big on his take.
When he records a song that is more his personality like "What A Buzz" he sounds like Olly Murs and not Olly Murs doing someone else. Sure sometimes its a little difficult to really take artist chameleons like this serious but when they croon songs as good as "Cry Your Heart Out" you can't deny how good they are and Olly can be off the hook good at times like the opening cut. The very British sounding ballad "One Of These Days" is a well written pop song that Olly does a fine job emoting the lyrics in a commanding way that draws you and makes you feel part of the song scape.
There are bonus tracks a-plenty on the I-tunes UK version with moderate success going to "Runaway" another very Bruno Mars sounding song that lacks Bruno's spirit and Olly doesn't sound very into either. The best of the bonus songs is easily "Just For Tonight" which should be on the main album and it would have been a great replacement for any of five or six duds. This song is a glorious anthemic love song that invited me to dance in my chair while I listened to the song and is for sure an add to my I-Pod. More songs like this would be a huge improvement to Olly's output and maybe he could become an album artists if there was more Olly and less producers and handlers influence.
In the end Olly Murs is going to find great success with a couple of the tracks on this album and he'll be in the studio recording a follow-up probably before this one even gets cold. That is unless "Dance With Me Tonight" explodes in North America and the song becomes the anthem of the 2012 which believe me it is more than good enough to be the song of the year and could be a bigger smash than the Canadian pop star Carly Rae Jepsen's excellent "Call Me Maybe". Here's to hoping the American release is a better package and Olly becomes a huge success here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment