Olly Murs' voice gives out at Glasgow Hydro, but support band Blue in slick shape
Olly Murs only got about half an hour into this Glasgow show before bringing it to a premature close, but support band Blue gave a modest but gratifying performance, writes Fiona Shepherd
Blue, Hydro, Glasgow ★★★
Olly Murs is celebrating 15 Years of Hits on his current tour but sadly only managed around half an hour of said hits in Glasgow before his voice gave out and he announced to a bemused audience that he would need to stop the show in order to preserve what little vocal capacity he still had for his remaining tour dates.
With Murs pledging “I’m going to come back”, there was some confusion over his intentions, but the house lights went up leaving the capacity crowd to file out into the daylight after only a third of the intended set.
In a video later posted to Instagram, he offered his audience an apology “from the bottom of my heart”, telling fans he was “so sorry”.
“I’ve never done this in 15 years,” he said. “Most of the time, as singers, you can get through it if your voice is not 100%.
“I walked out tonight thinking my voice is great, maybe felt a little bit run down. But I didn’t think I couldn’t do the show or I wouldn’t have come out otherwise.”
Special guests Blue, meanwhile, have racked up a quarter of a century in the pop industry and are more man band than boy band these days. “My knees,” joked Simon Webbe as he tackled some archetypal pseudo-swaggering boy band moves during their opening set – a modest but gratifying affair with the four-piece performing live vocals to backing tracks.
Webbe’s joshing aside, the group remained in slick shape. These days, bad boy Lee Ryan confines his excesses to his vocal theatrics, attempting undisciplined runs but otherwise retaining his chops as the band’s power singer. Anthony Costa radiates an understated sweeter tone, Duncan James possesses a strong pop voice and Webbe is the safe pair of soul hands.
Despite a second chapter to their career spanning well over a decade, Blue stuck to their early run of hits in a set which included the tight pop R&B of Bubblin’ and Stevie Wonder-sampling Curtain Falls, lower slung cuts One Love and Fly By, their fun, judicially themed debut hit All Rise and the overwrought ballad Breathe Easy, partly rendered in Italian. All form the foundation for the more comprehensive set to follow when Blue announce their own 25th birthday tour later in the year.
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