It opens with a syncopated drumbeat, like foot-stomps and clapping. "Ladies and gentlemen," announces an unidentified (American, male) voice, "we got a special treat for you tonight." A jaunty upright bass enters proceedings. "I'm gonna call my friend Olly up here," the voice continues, "to sing for you ladies. Olly! Let's go man!" His friend Olly sidles onto the track alongside a perky horn section, to announce: "my name is Olly, nice to meet you, can I tell you baby/lookin' 'round, there's a whole lot of pretty ladies/but not like you, you shine so bright!" We are thirty seconds into 'Dance With Me Tonight', and the reasons to loathe it are already myriad.
I've written about Olly Murs before, and expounded at some length about how much I dislike him as a pop star. After somehow turning out the pretty-much-brilliant 'Heart Skips A Beat' earlier this year, he's obviously - and unsurprisingly - going back to business as usual now. 'Dance With Me Tonight' is a take on pre-soul African-American pop, all doo-wop backing vocals and Jackie Wilson-esque rhythm and blues. Obviously, though, this is all rhythm and no blues; it's utterly soulless, shooting for explosive joy without any sense of sadness around the edges to make that joy meaningful, trying to sound like disinhibited release without giving the impression that the singer has ever had to repress anything in his life. The musical language Olly Murs is appropriating here developed as an expression of the frustrations and aspirations of a marginalised people, and that fact matters; it's what gives power, meaning and context to the sense of ecstatic, defiant release coded into it. And there's nothing more galling than hearing that musical language be appropriated by privileged people as a cheap short-cut to the energy of 'coolness' and 'fun' embodied in the music. That goes for the smug, self-satisfied funkiness of artists like Jamiroquai and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers; and it goes for Olly Murs and 'Dance With Me Tonight'.
This isn't an academic point; it's something that, to me at least, is totally perceptible in the music itself. The mood Murs projects throughout is completely smug and self-assured; there isn't a hint of vulnerability, sadness or urgency - nothing is really at stake. Which isn't exactly the best frame for the lyrical content of the song - as the title suggests, it's about Murs propositioning someone for a dance. "I won't give up without a fight," he sings, and that line might come across a bit less coercive and bullying if the singer himself projected any sense of vulnerability or fear of rejection. But Murs never sounds anything less than completely sure of himself, going so far as to announce, when reminiscing about his first glimpse of his addressee, "I knew right then you'd be mine". To me, the whole thing is repulsively sleazy and offensive, and all the more so because we are clearly not meant to code it as such.
As far as I'm concerned, then, there's absolutely nothing of value here, nothing remotely interesting, rewarding or gripping about this record. It's the sound of a smug, privileged and dislikeable singer revelling in his own smugness and privilege, and assuming that we'll all like him. When I write about number one singles here, I try to be as charitable as I can; I try to take every record seriously on its own terms. It was far, far more of a struggle to engage with 'Dance With Me Tonight' in this way than usual, and no matter how hard I try, there's no redeeming feature, nothing to connect with. This is hollow, empty, nothing music, and it's my absolute conviction that pop music should be, and very often is, far more than that.
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