Music review: Olly Murs

Hard though it may seem to get excited over the music and person of Olly Murs, two sittings of fans filled the Hydro this weekend to scream dutifully at the cheesy gyrations of 2015's Rear of the Year despite a pretty perfunctory show which lacked the musical punch and visual audacity of many of his pop peers' live presentations.

Olly Murs **

Hydro, Glasgow

A hysteria-building countdown anti-climaxed with Murs alone onstage with a fist in the air, where he was flanked by two huge screens projecting mirror images of this X Factor alumnus looking as mean and moody as his matey persona will allow.

Murs is the budget Robbie Williams, less frantic for approval but so busy mugging that it becomes impossible to take anything he does seriously. When he did eventually pause the tepid soul and funk pop template of the set to perform a generic bleeding heart ballad, he could hardly wait to move on to another jauntier confection. Even the simple sincerity of his one curveball hit, Dear Diary, was overdone in performance.

True to his pub covers roots, Murs was most attuned to a ten-minute hen party medley of infinitely superior songs by other artists from Luther Vandross via R Kelly to Justin Timberlake. For now, Murs can only dream of packing a sunny pop gem such as Can’t Stop the Feeling in his arsenal, the throwaway likes of Troublemaker and Dance With Me Tonight being his closest

bids for enduring earworm status.