All these lights don't compare to the way you shine

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

09/12/22 : Marry Me - Olly Murs

We don't mind a bit of Olly in this house and he seems a decent enough guy (although some of his haircuts haven't been exactly great).  I can't say I'm likely to view this as the musical highlight of the year, but I'm expecting it to be perfectly fine.

And yes, it generally is.  It has an "interesting" opening track featuring some dodgy vocoding and synth steel drums, but things settle down after that and I liked the title track, "25" and the closing track "Let Me Just Say" is lovely (and hopefully that one is aimed more at his fiancée than "I Hate You When You're Drunk" - apparently there's been a bit of backlash about that one).  It does feature more vocoding throughout than I was expecting which made my suspicious mind think "has he forgotten how to sing?" but I do realise that they can autotune anything away these days without anyone noticing - which means it was an active decision.  This album isn't going to convert anyone to an Olly Murs fanatic but I'm sure his fans will be perfectly happy with "more of the same".

We're at #1 in the charts with a new entry this week - I'll be interested to see how long it hangs around for (I was surprised to see that Stormzy has already dropped to #12 from last week).  The rest of the top five are Taylor, Metro Boomin (another new entry), Cliff Richard (only down two places from last week - he'll be around until the new year now!) and Michael Bublé (Xmas really is close now!).  There are no more new entries in the top ten - the next highest is Leftfield (#19) with their first album in seven years (which I might even choose to listen to without being forced to).

Surprisingly, Wikipedia has no entry on Olly's album - I'm sure one will pop along at some point but for the time being I have no fascinating or amusing facts for you.  "Customers also listened to" Sigrid, Mimi Webb, Stormzy and Aitch - none of whom seem obvious Olly fan material.  But I suspect a lot of people have a soft spot for Olly - yes, he's a bit cheesy but his heart's in the right place and he's put some decent songs out.  And there are a couple more decent ones on here as he gives his fans what they want - that's all they ask for really.

02/12/22 - Skilfully done, but not really for me
16/12/22 - Not terrible, but not for me

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