olly murs

Olly Murs and the Quiet Collapse of the Post-Brexit Pop Empire
A dispatch from the wreckage of global soft power, with sequins.

By the time the first missile fragments rained down over the Red Sea, Olly Murs was somewhere above the Persian Gulf in seat 3A, rehearsing falsetto runs for an Abu Dhabi brunch crowd that had paid $350 each to pretend the outside world still believed in British charm. It is 2024, and this is what passes for imperial projection: a former X-Factor runner-up with two platinum albums and the sort of grin that suggests he has never read a newspaper. Somewhere in Whitehall, a junior trade attaché updates a spreadsheet titled “Cultural Assets – Tier 3,” types “Murs, O.” and wonders if irony is still tax-deductible.

International readers may need reminding that Murs is a 39-year-old man whose primary export is upbeat pop-funk about dancing away heartbreak. To the British state, however, he is an instrument—rather like a euphonium, only harder to weaponise. Since Brexit evaporated the UK’s last remaining leverage (the ability to bore continental negotiators into submission), London has doubled down on “Gastrodiplomacy 2.0,” dispatching its mid-tier pop stars like cheerful human canapés. Murs is the smiling prawn vol-au-vent of soft power: familiar, vaguely 2012, and inexplicably still moving.

The itinerary tells the fuller story. After Dubai he will headline a resort in the Maldives before flying to Manila for a shopping-mall ribbon-cutting, then onward to São Paulo where British diplomats hope his set list will distract local officials from asking why the UK still owes $22 million in unpaid Amazon protection funds. One ambassador, speaking strictly off the record and two negronis in, confessed the strategy is “basically colonial karaoke—if they’re singing along to ‘Troublemaker,’ they’re not vetoing our WTO bids.”

Global audiences, bless their algorithm-addled hearts, appear enthusiastic. In Jakarta, teenagers who have never seen an episode of X-Factor stream Murs’ new single “Die of a Broken Heart” at 3 a.m. local time, briefly pushing it above a K-pop juggernaut and causing the Korean embassy to lodge a formal complaint about “retaliatory nostalgia.” Meanwhile, a TikTok micro-trend in Lagos pairs Murs’ chorus with footage of collapsing crypto exchanges; the juxtaposition is so bleak it circles back to camp. When asked about the phenomenon, Murs offers the diplomatically blank smile of a man who suspects he is the punchline but has been advised not to laugh.

Financial analysts watching the overseas tour note that ticket revenue, converted back to sterling, now outperforms the FTSE’s entire indie-music sector. This is less a testament to Murs’ pulling power than to the pound’s spectacular impersonation of damp tissue paper. A leaked Treasury memo suggests the Bank of England briefly considered adding “cheesy choruses” to the country’s foreign reserves, then remembered it still had some dignity left—roughly £3.50 at current rates.

Back home, the domestic press oscillates between patriotic puff pieces and elegiac think-pieces lamenting the death of Cool Britannia. Neither camp seems willing to admit that the corpse has been propped up by Spotify royalties and sheer embarrassment for years. The Guardian asks whether Murs is “our last global pop ambassador”; the Daily Mail counters that he should be knighted, preferably somewhere photogenic. Both miss the point: in an era when nations outsource diplomacy to footballers and micro-influencers, a grinning Essex crooner is exactly the ambassador we deserve.

And so the world keeps turning, albeit on a slightly off-key axis. Somewhere tonight, under a sky lit by drones selling artisanal cologne, Olly Murs will encore with “Dance With Me Tonight.” Delegates from 17 countries will sway awkwardly, calculating trade balances in their heads. A few will genuinely smile; the rest will wonder how civilisation came to this. The song ends, the confetti cannons fire biodegradable Union Jacks, and for four merciful minutes nobody mentions interest rates.

That, in the end, is the broader significance: when the old empires crumble, they don’t go out with a bang or a whimper—just a key change in B minor and the faint smell of subsidised prosecco. Curtain.