Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 05/31/2012 at 1:55 PM News

The Popdust Files: heart skips a beat, olly murs, one direction

When you’re the opening act for One Direction’s tour, like British artist and fellow X Factor alum Olly Murs is, you get certain benefits. Benefits like getting bandmates with ridiculously big fanbases to stop by as you do an acoustic performance of your single. In the business, they call this “cross-pollination,” or “synergy,” or “activating social media,” or “That chap Niall sure has a lot of fans, no?” (It does lend more credence to our theory that Niall will break out eventually. See, it’s acoustic! That suggests authenticity, or realness, or something!)

There are also toilet shenanigans in this video, for some reason.

Don't ask.

Video’s below, but first let’s talk about “Heart Skips a Beat” for a second. What you’re going to watch is an acoustic version of Murs’ single, which is also below. It’s a pleasant enough song, a little like “Alejandro” via “All That She Wants” with added pun value. (If you haven’t heard the song, you can still probably figure out the pun. What else can skip a beat?)

But that’s not what we need to talk about, per se. The original U.K. version has Rizzle Kicks, a quite likable hip-hop group that absolutely deserves to break out of their home country over, say, Ed Sheeran or–shots fired–Olly Murs himself. You’d think that one of the roughly five New British Invasions in the past few years could help that happen, and you’d definitely think that Olly Murs opening for One Direction might help. But no: in the U.S. release of the single, Rizzle Kicks get swapped out for Chiddy Bang, which is not an improvement. This is standard cross-ocean record-label procedure, but there are always exceptions. It’s not like Gotye ft. Kimbra had to become Gotye ft. Jessie J before charting. Come on. (Rant over.)