Robbie just needed to be a little more humble Scotty & he would have achieved more of those wonderful stars :rolleyes: ..half of them barely mention the songs on the CD.....just as well they did not see Wobbie Wabbit before they wrote these reviews or he would have gone into negative figures... :lol:

A different review by the Times - I like the last line ^_^

 

Robbie Williams: Reality Killed The Video Star

The Times Online

3 Stars

 

As comebacks go, you’d have to go all the way back to Britney’s infamous MTV Awards performance of Gimme Some to think of one that must have caused its architects more mortification than Robbie Williams’s recent X Factor appearance. Cruel as tabloid headlines can be, “Mummy — Who’s That Strange Man on X-Factor?” encapsulated Williams’ spook-faced performance of Bodies and the years of post-Rudebox invisibility that preceded it. But it was damage undone at his Electric Proms show. Angels and Millennium sounded underwhelming among the better songs from Reality Killed the Radio Star.

 

Subsequent listens to his eighth album underscore those first impressions. As ever, Williams takes the art of self-absorption to new heights. On Advertising Space (2005) he wrote about himself by way of Elvis — and, apparently inspired by Michael Jackson’s death, the magnificent opener Morning Sun takes a similar route to self-knowledge, with more than a hint of Life on Mars: “A message to the troubadour/The world don’t love you any more.” Trevor Horn’s involvement is well documented — but the real masterstroke has been the deployment of his Art of Noise collaborator Anne Dudley. If a Robbie album has to have singles that lodge themselves on radio playlists for months then the orchestral stardust sprinkled by Dudley on Bodies and You Know Me realises their potential.

 

But anyone seeking out the “real” Robbie will note the change in emotional air pressure that takes hold halfway through the album. Last Days of Disco ushers in a discombobulation that dissipates only with Won’t Do That, a paean to current “Swiss army wife” Ayda Field. But in between those songs lie three of his finest: the rainy-day ennui of Deceptacon, the electropop of Difficult for Weirdos and the volcanic, orchestral powerchords of Superblind. Maybe you really can’t please all of the people all of the time, but at times like this, Reality Killed the Video Star comes heroically close.

 

(EMI; out on Mon)

 

 

Robbie Williams - Reality Killed The Video Star

 

Posted on November 6, 2009 at 10:36 am by Clare Lydon

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http://i36.tinypic.com/ms2nog.jpg

 

The knowing irony of Robbie’s new album title has been somewhat deadened by his recent comeback performance on the X Factor - even if he might claim he was being postmodern, wink to camera. Whatever, three years on from the generally panned Rudebox, the question isn’t is Robbie’s new album any good but rather, is Robbie the pop star worth the effort anymore?

 

The issue with Robbie is that on CD he sounds sincere, but in person he often overacts and out-performs himself, taking away any sentiment and emotion that the song originally portrayed. His natural habitat is Let Me Entertain You and Rock DJ, which demand those qualities both on record and live. On record, his ballads are also his strength - until you see him nod and jerk his way through them live and you want to hurl your pint of warm cider at him. On the new album though, Robbie has succeeded in combining cool ballads with 80s electro and his trademark karaoke-bloke singalongs to make this, surprisingly, a kookily triumphant return.

 

The album kicks off with upcoming second single Morning Sun, all hazy sunlight and crisp vocals. Meanwhile, tawdry comeback track Bodies works its way out of the pack next, but close your ears and it’ll all be over soon. You Know Me sees a swaggering Robbie jauntily busking on the pavement, while Do You Mind sees the boy from Tunstall come over all Mick Jagger to an 80s backing track, chewing his vowels noisily. Listen closely and you can hear the ghost of Wax building a bridge to your heart. Bowie’s Space Oddity also gets a nod on Deceptacon (which has the stellar first line ‘Microwave yourself today…’), while Somewhere sees Williams straying unwisely into musical theatre, which may just be the calling he was truly destined for. He could easily have been Ray Quinn in another life couldn’t he? Meanwhile, Starstruck brings to mind George Michael’s Fast Love and Last Days Of Disco channels the spirit of the Pet Shop Boys. What stands out throughout the whole ensemble though is producer Trevor Horn’s knack for knob-twiddling, introducing big band instruments to tracks and balancing Williams’ appeal beautifully.

 

This album is aimed squarely at the adult alternative section, which is exactly where Williams swims with ease. Unlike more modern alternatives though - such as James Morrison - Robbie offers up topics veering off the ain’t-love-a-bitch formula, bringing personality as ever to his wide variety of styles. This is a professional effort by the ultimate entertainer which totally delivers on record. Just steer clear of his live shows to avoid it being murdered before your very eyes.

 

Listen to Robbie Williams Radio on RealMusic…

 

 

 

www.realmusic.com

Reivews are positive overall, but some of these 3 star reviews from the broadsheets are quite annoying. It is almost as if they know its a great album but cant quite fully admit it :rolleyes:

 

Also, The Mirror gave it an awful review today as expected :lol: I bet the staff on that horrid paper prop work on commission of who can slag Rob off the most :lol: To show how clueless they are, they said Blasphemy was the weakest track :lol: :rolleyes:

 

I'd steer clear of the NME review then ... and the rating.

 

I must admit ... even I thought the Mirror one was uncalled for ... there are a couple of catchy little ditties there enough to rate a three out of five rating.

 

Norma

 

Not suprised at all to hear NME gave the album a bad review :lol: They usually hate Robbie, but loved Rudebox, so it was to be expected they wouldnt like this which overall sounds more like old Robbie than Rudebox. NME set out to be seen as 'cool' and liked Rudebox for being so 'out there', but then they said it was the years worst album if I recall so they just contradict themselves.. :rolleyes: I cant find it online, do you have a link Norma or is it just in the magazine? I usually find bad reviews quite entertaining as they tend to pick out the best tracks as being the worst :lol:

Not suprised at all to hear NME gave the album a bad review :lol: They usually hate Robbie, but loved Rudebox, so it was to be expected they wouldnt like this which overall sounds more like old Robbie than Rudebox. NME set out to be seen as 'cool' and liked Rudebox for being so 'out there', but then they said it was the years worst album if I recall so they just contradict themselves.. :rolleyes: I cant find it online, do you have a link Norma or is it just in the magazine? I usually find bad reviews quite entertaining as they tend to pick out the best tracks as being the worst :lol:

 

Unfortunately no! The NME are too tightfisted to have anything worthwhile ... like reviews 'free'. I went off the NME years ago when they started slagging off ELO and Jeff Lynne! I was surprised that they gave Take That's album as good a review and rating as they did ... given that they hate Take That as much as the apparently hate Rob.

 

I must say ... I actually like Rob's new video (but I liked his video for She's Madonna and I seemed to be in a minority) the song is OK too ... not as annoyingly pretentious as Bodies.

 

Besides ... whatever else I think of Rob - he is handsome. I must admit ... if Rob did join TT at any time for one or two things ... how often is it that you can say that all five members of a group are attractive?

 

Norma

I wonder of everyone at The Times is going to write a review :P

 

Robbie Williams: Reality Killed the Video Star

 

By Dan Cairns

 

Mocked by some for his bizarre X Factor antics, hailed by others as back to his best, Robbie returns, as neurotic and needy as ever. Produced by Trevor Horn (whose 1979 Buggles hit the title so clunkily references), Reality Killed... features the same grab bag of influences — the Beatles, electro-pop, lighters-aloft balladeering — and suffers from the same old Robbie problems: the sense that he is an impressionist, not an artist; dreadful puns purporting to be uniquely witty, insightful couplets; vocals that, because of Williams’s manic Norman Wisdom gurning, self-deprecation and possibly even disdain for what he has re-enlisted for, convey ambivalence rather than passion; and tunes (Won’t Do That, Morning Sun, Blasphemy) whose hook-filled adeptness cannot conceal the hollowness at their heart. Enough now.

 

 

The Times

 

 

Robbie Williams' real return to form

Robbie Williams: Reality Killed The Video Star (EMI)

By ARWA HAIDER - Monday, November 9, 2009

 

**** Metro rating

 

http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2009/11/robbiewilliams_450x350.jpg

Reality Killed The Video Star finds Robbie back to his best

 

How times have changed since 2002, when Robbie Williams blustered: 'I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams!' as he signed a mega-bucks record deal.

Further hits followed that decadent era but so did the meltdowns – on a personal scale for the self-critical Williams and on a massive financial level for the music industry generally.

 

Now this eighth solo album doesn't only represent a comeback for Williams (following his UFO-spotting 'wilderness years' in LA), it hints at a return to the lavish good ol' days of mainstream pop.

 

When he recently performed at the BBC Electric Proms, the crowds of fans and corporate suits swooned over him like a prodigal saviour. Reality Killed The Video Star is Williams's smartest album to date.

 

He thrives under the attention of veteran producer Trevor Horn and the songs are a nifty blend of trademark self-obsessed soul-searching (hymnal opening number Morning Sun; Blasphemy with original co-writer Guy Chambers) and gratifyingly offbeat turns such as Difficult For Weirdos and Deceptacon.

 

These tracks progress from his adventurous last album, Rudebox (actually a great record, even if it did end up as Chinese tarmac or something).

 

On Bodies, he satirises vanity as only a bruised ex-boyband hottie could but there's also a subtle evolution in ballads such as Won't Do That, which he dedicated to his 'missus' onstage, and while he doesn't specifically mention names or his reconciliation with Take That, real love feels like the catalyst here.

 

For the first time in his solo life, it actually sounds like the bitterness has gone, and Williams emerges as a genuine sweetheart.

 

 

http://www.metro.co.uk/metrolife/music/art...p;in_page_id=25

NME normally post their reviews up on their website on the Monday after the Wednesday release of their comic magazine:

 

Album review: Robbie Williams - 'Reality Killed The Video Star' (EMI)

 

It's so self-referential that a yawning hole appears where Robbie's heart should be

 

"Don’t call it a comeback, look what I invented here”. Yes, let’s look. How fitting that Williams made, as the showbiz fairytale script puts it, ‘his triumphant return’ on The X Factor, since he was the original ‘anyone can do this’ superstar. He was crap, but his knowing winks told audiences he knew he was crap, and allowed them in on a great old wheeze, while flatteringly suggesting stardom was in reach of the everyman. He’s since become the icon of the ‘Me’ generation, whose songs are about himself, and any f***-ups are fed into the celebrity magazine maw and shat out as another part of his personal journey.

 

Cut to the present, where we find the abject ‘Rudebox’ has been assimilated into his story as a wake-up call paving the way for this new album. It’s packaged well as a return to form. Proven unit-shifter is the producer (the album title references Horn’s ’80s one-hit wonder with ’ ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’), who gives the album one main plot, ‘The Return Of Classic Robbie’. This means we get piano and string ballads to remind audiences of ‘Angels’ (‘Morning Sun’ is Tears For Fears’ ‘Sowing the Seeds Of Love’ reimagined as ‘Sowing the Seeds Of Self-Pity’), and a sub-plot, ‘Robbie Chimes With The Sound Of Now’, in which ice-cool euphoric disco reminds audiences of . This sub-plot is far more fun than the main, with ‘Deceptacon’ (no, not a Le Tigre cover), 'Starstruck’ and ‘Superblind’ all bringing those ‘Big Robbie Choruses’ effectively into the Balearic-Italo-Whatev template, although Williams buggers them up with hopscotch lyrics such as “Microwave yourself today, save you for a rainy day” on ‘Deceptacon’. If you want a cold, eroticised disco vibe, don’t invite Norman Wisdom.

 

But such faux-pas are just signs of a larger problem: There Is Nothing Here. The more you delve into it the less you find, because it’s all affectation. Listening to the ‘Robbie does doo-wop’ of ‘You Know Me’, and the ‘Robbie does AC/DC’ of ‘Do You Mind’ is like tumbling into the void. Everything is in inverted commas with Williams. Even ‘Robbie Williams’ is nothing, just a symbol of entertainment, and a mirror to reflect his audiences’ desires. Tragically, he knows it too. The terror in his eyes on The X Factor revealed a naked being with no self anymore – but the script says this is a triumphant comeback, so that must be the ‘reality’, folks.

 

Martin Robinson

4 out of 10

:rofl: :rofl:

 

Cheers for that Rich. Gave me a good laugh like I expected :lol:

 

Can't see a review like that putting anyone who likes Robbie off, as it is clearly by someone who has disliked all his pre-Rudebox music :lol:

 

I think the Mirror and the NME are rather kind compared to this one!

 

Washington Post

 

It's been 10 years since Robbie Williams, the onetime British boy band frontman and enduring tabloid staple, first attempted American crossover success. Several tepidly selling releases later, Williams may have to resign himself to being one of those uniquely British preoccupations that never catches on stateside, like beans on toast, or Sienna Miller. Don't think Williams hasn't noticed. "Message to the troubadour/The world don't love you anymore," he intones glumly on "Morning Sun," the opening track of his new disc, "Reality Killed the Video Star." The disc's title is a play on the Buggles' famed "Video Killed the Radio Star," but Williams, who has watched reality-show singers like Leona Lewis find the American stardom he surely dreams of, couldn't sound more serious.

 

Williams recently dabbled in electro-pop and novelty rap, but consumer indifference may have finally freed him to make the album he wants. He has historically thrived on florid ballads, awkward puns and schmaltz, and "Reality" is happy to oblige. It's ballad-heavy and louche, its best tracks pivoting between winking narcissism and an exaggerated self-pity that, for Williams, is as necessary as air.

There are tracks that seem like remnants of his club phase ("Last Days of Disco"), and others that suggest lounge singer reworkings of '80s Bond movie theme songs ("Somewhere"). But the best tracks (such as "Morning Sun," or the equally great "You Know Me") are the most outsized, string-and-piano-happy curiosities that sound like the result of a collaboration between the Pet Shop Boys and Andy Williams.

 

Allison Stewart

 

Someone ought to tell her though, that a heck of a lot of people like Beans on Toast - cheap & cheerful!

 

(By the way ... thanks Rich for that link - for other artists I mean) I've never noticed that before from NME - something for free I mean.

 

 

Norma

Edited November 10, 200915 yr by Norma_Snockers

From the LA Times.. They gave Bon Jovi's new album 1 and a half stars :lol: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/...0,7654075.story

 

 

Robbie Williams

 

"Reality Killed the Video Star"

 

Virgin Records

 

* * *

 

"This is a song full of metaphors," Robbie Williams sneers over some dusted-off mid-1970s guitar crunch in the party anthem "Do You Mind," which comes right in the middle of this bullishly diverse album. What song isn't? Dwelling on the obvious is an easy pop star move, but the witty Mr. Williams is usually sharper than that.

 

Perhaps he's decided that being obvious is his only hope. The attitudinal crooner and former boy band star remains a novelty stateside, though in England he's basically Justin Timberlake minus the grace. Williams' eighth studio effort is a full-body flex matching buttery ballads with laser-flecked dance tracks and arch updates from the music hall.

 

It's meant to both resurrect his flagging career at home and to finally capture America, now that younger stars like Katy Perry have made Williams' brand of power camp acceptable here.

 

To that end, "Reality" is all about metaphors, puns and other brilliant turns of phrase, from the title that nods to the old Buggles hit by its producer, Trevor Horn, to the rapper-like rhymes ("it's not a blast for me, it's blasphemy") and non sequiturs ("the hairdo of the godhead") scattered throughout its meditations of fame, age and noncommittal romance. Whether upbeat and sci-fi mystical or orchestrated and jaded, these songs showcase the nasally soulful Williams as an irresistibly smart, cosmopolitan manchild of the overly wired world.

 

He's always written about fame's fun and peril, but with "Reality," Williams focuses hard on the out-of-body experience of the everyday. "I've got no problem with the physical minimal real life," he croons, slightly Auto-tuned, in the Pet Shop Boys homage "Starstruck." But that's a lie.

 

Reclaiming Williams' spot in the line of self-skewering Brit wits that runs from Noel Coward to Ricky Gervais, "Reality" covers much musical ground while sticking to its main point: that for both the celebrity and the average bloke on date night, life is one big show full of flubbed lines and fumbled choreography.

 

Horn's production is gorgeous, and Williams benefits greatly from the gifts of the producer's longtime team, including the arranger Anne Dudley. "Reality" unfolds with deliberate variety -- its calculated pleasures won't appeal to those seeking earnest emotion or even slightly ragged sounds.

 

Like the verbal tricks he loves to employ, the appeal of Robbie Williams might still be too tricky to be truly universal. But this album proves that he is a great brain teaser.

Edited November 10, 200915 yr by Scotty

You know what Scotty! I post on IMDb (or used to ages back - I like film more than music) ... and I said years ago there, that I truly believed that Rob would one day be a fair success in the States (I said it may take a while to get there ... but I honestly believed he'd do it ... probably at a time when he was least trying to do so!) Looks like I could be right!

 

Anyway ... don't bow down to me yet ... for now you may all just call me Cassandra! :lol:

 

Norma