The other three panellists were pleased too. Dannii Minogue assured Olly that he had the ‘whole package’. Cheryl Cole pronounced him ‘a natural-born entertainer’. ‘You’ve got four yes’s,’ announced Louis Walsh. Perhaps a lot more than four, reckoned Dannii: ‘Everyone in the room. Two thousand yes’s.’
With the sound of the crowd still ringing in his ears, Olly Murs left the stage to the strains of another Stevie Wonder hit, ‘For Once in My Life’ – a fitting choice of song. You may only get one chance to prove yourself as a potential star. Olly took that chance and it was the start of an extraordinary rise to fame.
Olly had attempted the X Factor audition process twice before, in fact, but reasoned, ‘I felt I had to keep trying.’ He had sung to backroom researchers and production-team members on his two previous attempts but knew that, to tickle the ear of Simon Cowell, ‘You need to pick the right song.’ Third time around, with ‘Superstition’, he picked right.
‘It’s a weird feeling when you first walk out on The X Factor,’ Olly would tell ITV1 in 2012. ‘The nerves, of course, because you know you’ve got to perform. The excitement because you’re on one of the biggest TV shows in the country. And then you’ve still got the four judges in front of you.’
A collision of television and the music industry, The X Factor was not just about entertainment, it was about cold, hard business sense. Contestants who succeeded on the programme, even those who compelled the audience to watch and vote week after week, were not guaranteed to persuade the public to buy or download a track they would release six months after the series final. ‘People can give an amazing performance on the show but then they can’t get the whole career thing right,’ argued Simon Cowell. ‘It’s disappointing but it’s out of our hands – it comes down to the public – whether or not they like them after the show.’
The gifted winner of the 2006 series, singer Leona Lewis, had become a hard act to follow. She had sold millions of records, and not just in Britain. For Cowell, her international reach was the key to the sort of talent he wanted to foster from the base of the British X Factor. ‘I want to find someone who is going to represent this country all over the world. And when you hear their record on the radio, you want to say, “This show helped to launch your career.” One minute you’re singing in your bedroom, suddenly you can be a star all over the world. Winning this show can change someone’s life forever.’ For Simon Cowell, it really was that simple.
Yet there was no guarantee of finding a Leona Lewis every time. There were the fates of Steve Brookstein (the first-series victor in 2004) and the 2007 winner, Leon Jackson, to consider. Once the excitement of the competition was over, success on the artistes’ own terms was far from certain. ‘We can’t guarantee that they will be an international star,’ Cowell would say. ‘There is a fifty-fifty chance that they are going to make it. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Trying to find a star with long-term appeal is not an easy job.’ In late 2009, nine months after Alexandra Burke had stormed the 2008 final and landed the Christmas number one, it was still too early to say whether her career would go the way of Lewis’s or of Brookstein’s. ‘This is not a career card, this is a platform,’ Cheryl Cole pointed out. ‘It’s after the show that you actually prove yourself as an artist and the career kicks in.’
The press wondered if 2009 might be the year that a male artist with staying power could win both the series and establish themselves with a long-lasting pop career. The Sun newspaper lumped together a few potential finalists, including singing teacher Danyl Johnson and Jamie ‘Afro’ Archer (who sported a ‘bubble-barnet’ and described Essex’s Olly Murs as ‘the karaoke equivalent of telly chef Jamie Oliver’). When a large number of newcomers appear on television, the media has to use broad strokes to sum them up – where they hail from, what well-loved star they may recall, etc. No one really knows for sure who is going to be a superstar. Not even the British television-watching public. Not even Simon Cowell.
ITV1 broadcast Olly Murs’s audition as part of The X Factor on Saturday, 12 September 2009. An estimated 12 million viewers tuned in to see him take the stage to the strains of Dennis Waterman’s ‘I Could Be So Good for You’, the theme to the old ITV drama series Minder. He was presented as the epitome of an ordinary 20-something guy, whom many viewers could identify with. Until relatively recently, his experience of singing had been confined to posing in front of the bedroom mirror and joining in songs at family gatherings. Some pub-goers in his Essex hometown had seen him in action on karaoke nights and in a band or two but, outside Witham, almost no one in the music industry or the British public knew who he was.
But even at this early stage, Olly had self-confidence in spades. Within a few days of his singing debut on TV, he would say, ‘I don’t want to sound big-headed or anything but I’ve got something special – I’m not just someone who can sing. I can dance and sing.’ He also suspected that his dancing ability gave him an edge over the previous winners of the contest, especially the males. ‘Leon Jackson, Shayne Ward [who won X Factor in 2005], Steve Brookstein are all good singers,’ he stressed. ‘Maybe better than me. But I’ve got the dancing and I know that will put me ahead.’
To even consider taking a step into the limelight requires a great deal of self-belief and self-confidence. Those who are doubtful about their abilities could be swayed by the nay-sayers and pierced by critical slings and arrows. Pop stardom is not a suitable career choice for the shrinking violet or for those who hate being photographed. Olly recognised in himself that he was a shy person. ‘But that doesn’t stop me from knowing I’ve got talent,’ he said.
The phrase ‘overnight sensation’ is much overused in entertainment circles. Even if someone becomes known to the general public with suddenness, it may be that they are known to entertainment-industry insiders. After all, millions of pounds are spent on launching a new artist – a big risk even for someone who is prodigiously talented and versatile. Uncovering an unknown – a complete unknown – can have many pitfalls. Yet, aside from some gigs in his hometown, Olly Murs did seem to be someone with genuinely untapped potential. And now, 12-million people had seen him on national television.
The Internet was similarly buzzing about Olly Murs. Some 350,000 visitors to the YouTube website would watch his debut appearance. Several Olly fan pages would be set up on the social-networking site Facebook, whose US-born founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was coincidentally born on the exact same day as him. It seemed everyone wanted to be Olly’s friend. ‘It’s gone crazy, I’ve never been so popular,’ he gasped. ‘All these girls are messaging me and saying I’m hot. It’s a shock because I’ve never been the guy that pulled all the girls. I haven’t had a proper girlfriend for years.’
Olly Murs was, by pop’s standards, a late starter. It’s comparatively rare for a pop-music singer to emerge apparently fully formed in their mid-twenties and maintain their popularity after a year or two. But his X Factor debut was little short of sensational. Here was a performer who, in his formative years, had watched and heard the most accomplished dancers and singers, and assimilated all their greatest qualities, but had remembered to add something of his own too. ‘My little shimmy from the audition is my signature.’ But, he added, ‘My dance moves never got me anywhere before.’
Even his parents were startled by his capabilities on stage. Pete and Vicky-Lynn had seen him perform in local bars a few times but the live audition was a different proposition. As we will see, they had expressed doubts about the job security of their son making a living as a singer and had tried to convince Olly that he should keep pursuing some kind of ‘normal’ employment. But all their reservations were swept away when they heard him perform ‘Superstition’ in front of thousands – and in front of the most critical voice in TV and music entertainment. ‘They are like any parents,’ said Olly. ‘They want me to have a good job and a career, and didn’t think singing was a long-term option. I think I changed their minds.’
But it’s one thing to perform