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How Robbie Williams became the ultimate British pop star

 

Gfc1f2I.png

 

With his swaggering yet self-aware lyrics and rousing melodies, Robbie Williams is the king of laddish, early Noughties pub culture. Long may he reign.

 

About halfway into Robbie Williams’s fifth album, 2003’s Escapology, there’s a track called “Handsome Man”. The song is solid gold Robbie – there is a lean in its shoulders; its bassline does not simply groove but swaggers. Its lyrics, as all his best do, play with his public image – and in mid-Noughties Britain, Robbie was sexy, self-aware and more famous than God.

 

“Handsome Man” is so full of zingers it could be a stand-up routine – “Have I gone up in the world/Or has the world go down on me?” Williams winks, forever walking the tightrope between pop and panto that is his alone – but there’s one line in particular that always stands out to me. Part way through the second verse, he sings “I’m the man who put the ‘Brit’/in ‘celebrity’”.

 

In 2002, Stoke-on-Trent-born Williams struck with EMI the biggest record deal in British history at the time – £80m for six albums, the first of which was Escapology. A figure like that, Alexis Petridis wrote for the Guardian at the time, “can’t be recouped – unless Williams achieves success in the US”.

 

The elusive goal of “breaking America” haunted many British musicians pre-social media. Another level of fame and glory was available to the chosen few that managed to catch the attention of US audiences: UK acts seemed small-time in comparison with glossy megastars like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Williams – already very popular in continental Europe – was believed to be up to the challenge, however, and moved to Los Angeles to make Escapology in large part at studios across California.

 

The record is clearly influenced by both the surroundings and Williams’s ambition to crack the American market: “Revolution” is a bluesy and deeply self-indulgent duet with vocalist Rose Stone, while “Me and My Monkey” is a bizarre, Fear and Loathing-type night sweat set in the Vegas desert. Despite such pandering, American listeners couldn’t get on board. Williams’s British idiosyncrasies were apparently too irrepressible, his mammoth success in the UK too tethered to his status as a celebrity here, his mode of expression too tied up in both the golden feeling of being the drunkest, funniest person in the pub – not the “bar”, but resolutely the pub – and the biting regret of the morning after, when you’re alone with only a polystyrene tray of freezing cold chips next to you for company. Escapology peaked on the US Billboard Hot 200 at number 43. This is still the highest position Williams has ever reached on that chart.

 

Ultimately, Williams was never going to crack America, despite the considerable wattage of his charisma (as Fergal Kinney writes for the Quietus, he is a figure who has always “transcended traditional notions of talent and competence”) and his status as Britain’s biggest popstar. In fact, it was precisely that status that kept him from making the jump. Williams’s Britishness is fundamental to his work – his heady singalong piano and guitar lines could only have emerged out of a nation that gets its kicks inside football stadiums and nightclubs. His Britishness has hamstrung him, but it is also what makes him great. No mainstream male British pop act has come close to exploring – embodying – the mores of his times to the extent that Robbie Williams did in the early Noughties.

 

obbie Williams has remained at the periphery of the British cultural imagination since the peak of his career – his spirit moves in the bottled mania that descends on a crowd of people at karaoke whenever someone does “Angels” (as if to prove my point, I was recently in the company of a Canadian friend-of-a-friend when this specific strain of dancing plague took hold: he was baffled, mate) – but in recent weeks he has returned to the foreground. This is ostensibly because he is currently taking a victory lap around the UK as he tours XXV, a greatest hits album featuring re-orchestrated versions of his biggest songs (he’ll also be the subject of an upcoming biopic and a Netflix documentary series). But maybe we’re retrospectively realising how much of a one-off he really is. In the UK, of course, Escapology was an enormous success. It was the best-selling record of the year, shifting 1.2 million copies in the UK, and it preceded his legendary three-night run at Knebworth House, where, between 1-3 August 2003, he played to a combined 375,000 people.

 

During his imperial phase – probably loosely defined as the period from 1999 until 2003, which saw him release Sing When You’re Winning, followed by his wildly popular covers album Swing When You’re Winning, and then Escapology – he was inescapable (another choice “Handsome Man” line: “It’s hard to be humble/When you’re so f***ing big”). This fact is made more interesting when you consider that in their songs, Williams and his writing partner Guy Chambers were discussing topics like masculinity, vulnerability and mental illness in a manner that still feels disarming now, even in our “Time to Talk”-obsessed culture.

 

“My bed’s full of takeaways/And fantasies of easy lays/The pause button’s broke on my video”, Williams sings on 1999’s “Strong”, distilling the ennui of a single man in his late twenties (on the song’s mammoth chorus he simply states: “You think that I’m strong/You’re wrong”) in such a specifically British register. On the other end of the spectrum, the silliness of “Rock DJ” captures the slightly dark buzz of a night out on a UK high street. Flick a bit further through his discography and you land on “Feel”, which includes what is, quite simply, one of the great lyrics of all time: “I don’t wanna die/But I ain’t keen on living either”.

 

Listening to these songs, as ironic as they sometimes are, you also get the sense that Williams means what he is saying, and that the experiences he talks about so vividly, even when they are unflattering, are real. His audience’s lives were full of Bench T-shirts, indoor smoking, Page 3 spreads and Bacardi Breezers – but so was Robbie’s. Of course, while in some ways he embodied the harmful British machismo of the era – lads’ mag culture in all its sickness; Blairite eat-the-world consumerism – he was also a victim of it, openly damaged and imperfect, giving candid newspaper interviews about his struggles with addiction. Despite his wealth, he was relatable before relatability became both commodified and apparently impossible for celebrities to achieve. It’s a huge part of why his appeal has endured, especially held up against the sheen of popstars today.

 

It says a lot that his closest analogue on the current landscape is probably the distinctly unrelatable Harry Styles, another boy-band standout from the north of England whose musical ability is secondary to his charm, and who has also achieved success by embracing the fashionable masculinity of his day (for Styles this has meant androgynous dressing and a publicly deferential attitude). But the younger man has attained global stardom and LA cool by remaining vague, his lyrics atmospheric rather than sharp-edged, his accent meandering. Where Styles’s Britishness is indefinite, Williams’s remains defining. His brand of laddish Noughties bravado courses through everything from his lyrics to his proclivity for oversharing onstage, like someone holding court in a smoking area.

 

Robbie Williams – today 48, happily married and sober – is better off without the approval of the US. He has instead been elevated to national treasure status here, and will play to huge, adoring British and European audiences for as long as he wishes. He remains the patron saint of pub singers, the guardian angel of the end of the night – and the man who, without doubt, puts the “Brit” in “celebrity”.

 

[see also: “Don’t Worry Darling” review: A derivative let-down]

 

Topics in this article: Pop music, Robbie Williams

 

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music-...ritish-pop-star

Edited by Sydney11

Oasis Got Massive Band To Breakup At Party

 

When you think about bands that have totally changed your life; you’ll think about the time and place where you first heard of the band – or heard a song that you would later find out was by the band that would change your life. Some songs and bands lay heavily in our thoughts for the emotions that they brought to us at one time and some songs and bands serve cornerstones for our journeys here. The same can be said for how Robbie Williams looks up to Oasis.

 

Per NME, Williams reminisced on stage about the memory of partying with Oasis at the festival shortly after he made the decision to leave Take That.

 

While relations between Williams and the Gallagher brothers later took a turn, Williams acknowledged that the moment was central to him starting on a new path. At a recent show, before performing a cover of Oasis’ ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, Williams said: “I started getting ideas about writing my own songs. One thing led to another and I made the cardinal mistake of breaking the rules. They couldn’t contain me anymore. I set off with [a] flute full of champagne and a pocket full of cocaine, ready to get insane in the membrane and I went to Glastonbury to begin what I didn’t know was to be the start of my new life. When I was there, I hung out with this lot…(Oasis)”

 

Clearly hurt, Williams would continue to tell his story. He added: “Take That became a painful, distant memory. Until they came back and were much bigger than they were back then! They came back and they were bigger than they were! And I was happy for them, and I thought, ‘F*ck it, if you can beat them join them.’”

 

Since then, Williams has had a more than successful career as have Oasis/the Gallagher brothers on their own.

 

https://britpopnews.com/oasis-got-massive-b...eakup-at-party/

Edited by Sydney11

Teddy is so great entertainer!! :wub:

 

---

 

Well... have a chance to get Albert Hall? =)

 

@1581914461061148672

 

 

O Wow ! , I would just love a TV special of XXV with full orchestra :wub:. It's something to hope for :)

Edited by Sydney11

Seeing the two of them perform together now Harry is all grown up would be fun ;)

 

 

QkOCiWt.png

Edited by Laura130262

I would like to see Robbie with Taylor Swift, harry Styles, Liam Gallagher, Dolly Parton and one of the South Korean K-pop protagonists
Seeing the two of them perform together now Harry is all grown up would be fun ;)

QkOCiWt.png

 

Yep. Father & Son :lol:

 

 

Some of the Tik Tok comments are hilarious..

 

I would like to see Robbie with Taylor Swift, harry Styles, Liam Gallagher, Dolly Parton and one of the South Korean K-pop protagonists

 

 

Ooooh , don't know about Dolly . Taylor for sure :)

How Robbie Williams became the ultimate British pop star

 

Gfc1f2I.png

 

With his swaggering yet self-aware lyrics and rousing melodies, Robbie Williams is the king of laddish, early Noughties pub culture. Long may he reign.

 

About halfway into Robbie Williams’s fifth album, 2003’s Escapology, there’s a track called “Handsome Man”. The song is solid gold Robbie – there is a lean in its shoulders; its bassline does not simply groove but swaggers. Its lyrics, as all his best do, play with his public image – and in mid-Noughties Britain, Robbie was sexy, self-aware and more famous than God.

 

“Handsome Man” is so full of zingers it could be a stand-up routine – “Have I gone up in the world/Or has the world go down on me?” Williams winks, forever walking the tightrope between pop and panto that is his alone – but there’s one line in particular that always stands out to me. Part way through the second verse, he sings “I’m the man who put the ‘Brit’/in ‘celebrity’”.

 

In 2002, Stoke-on-Trent-born Williams struck with EMI the biggest record deal in British history at the time – £80m for six albums, the first of which was Escapology. A figure like that, Alexis Petridis wrote for the Guardian at the time, “can’t be recouped – unless Williams achieves success in the US”.

 

The elusive goal of “breaking America” haunted many British musicians pre-social media. Another level of fame and glory was available to the chosen few that managed to catch the attention of US audiences: UK acts seemed small-time in comparison with glossy megastars like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Williams – already very popular in continental Europe – was believed to be up to the challenge, however, and moved to Los Angeles to make Escapology in large part at studios across California.

 

The record is clearly influenced by both the surroundings and Williams’s ambition to crack the American market: “Revolution” is a bluesy and deeply self-indulgent duet with vocalist Rose Stone, while “Me and My Monkey” is a bizarre, Fear and Loathing-type night sweat set in the Vegas desert. Despite such pandering, American listeners couldn’t get on board. Williams’s British idiosyncrasies were apparently too irrepressible, his mammoth success in the UK too tethered to his status as a celebrity here, his mode of expression too tied up in both the golden feeling of being the drunkest, funniest person in the pub – not the “bar”, but resolutely the pub – and the biting regret of the morning after, when you’re alone with only a polystyrene tray of freezing cold chips next to you for company. Escapology peaked on the US Billboard Hot 200 at number 43. This is still the highest position Williams has ever reached on that chart.

 

Ultimately, Williams was never going to crack America, despite the considerable wattage of his charisma (as Fergal Kinney writes for the Quietus, he is a figure who has always “transcended traditional notions of talent and competence”) and his status as Britain’s biggest popstar. In fact, it was precisely that status that kept him from making the jump. Williams’s Britishness is fundamental to his work – his heady singalong piano and guitar lines could only have emerged out of a nation that gets its kicks inside football stadiums and nightclubs. His Britishness has hamstrung him, but it is also what makes him great. No mainstream male British pop act has come close to exploring – embodying – the mores of his times to the extent that Robbie Williams did in the early Noughties.

 

Robbie Williams has remained at the periphery of the British cultural imagination since the peak of his career – his spirit moves in the bottled mania that descends on a crowd of people at karaoke whenever someone does “Angels” (as if to prove my point, I was recently in the company of a Canadian friend-of-a-friend when this specific strain of dancing plague took hold: he was baffled, mate) – but in recent weeks he has returned to the foreground. This is ostensibly because he is currently taking a victory lap around the UK as he tours XXV, a greatest hits album featuring re-orchestrated versions of his biggest songs (he’ll also be the subject of an upcoming biopic and a Netflix documentary series). But maybe we’re retrospectively realising how much of a one-off he really is. In the UK, of course, Escapology was an enormous success. It was the best-selling record of the year, shifting 1.2 million copies in the UK, and it preceded his legendary three-night run at Knebworth House, where, between 1-3 August 2003, he played to a combined 375,000 people.

 

During his imperial phase – probably loosely defined as the period from 1999 until 2003, which saw him release Sing When You’re Winning, followed by his wildly popular covers album Swing When You’re Winning, and then Escapology – he was inescapable (another choice “Handsome Man” line: “It’s hard to be humble/When you’re so f***ing big”). This fact is made more interesting when you consider that in their songs, Williams and his writing partner Guy Chambers were discussing topics like masculinity, vulnerability and mental illness in a manner that still feels disarming now, even in our “Time to Talk”-obsessed culture.

 

“My bed’s full of takeaways/And fantasies of easy lays/The pause button’s broke on my video”, Williams sings on 1999’s “Strong”, distilling the ennui of a single man in his late twenties (on the song’s mammoth chorus he simply states: “You think that I’m strong/You’re wrong”) in such a specifically British register. On the other end of the spectrum, the silliness of “Rock DJ” captures the slightly dark buzz of a night out on a UK high street. Flick a bit further through his discography and you land on “Feel”, which includes what is, quite simply, one of the great lyrics of all time: “I don’t wanna die/But I ain’t keen on living either”.

 

Listening to these songs, as ironic as they sometimes are, you also get the sense that Williams means what he is saying, and that the experiences he talks about so vividly, even when they are unflattering, are real. His audience’s lives were full of Bench T-shirts, indoor smoking, Page 3 spreads and Bacardi Breezers – but so was Robbie’s. Of course, while in some ways he embodied the harmful British machismo of the era – lads’ mag culture in all its sickness; Blairite eat-the-world consumerism – he was also a victim of it, openly damaged and imperfect, giving candid newspaper interviews about his struggles with addiction. Despite his wealth, he was relatable before relatability became both commodified and apparently impossible for celebrities to achieve. It’s a huge part of why his appeal has endured, especially held up against the sheen of popstars today.

 

It says a lot that his closest analogue on the current landscape is probably the distinctly unrelatable Harry Styles, another boy-band standout from the north of England whose musical ability is secondary to his charm, and who has also achieved success by embracing the fashionable masculinity of his day (for Styles this has meant androgynous dressing and a publicly deferential attitude). But the younger man has attained global stardom and LA cool by remaining vague, his lyrics atmospheric rather than sharp-edged, his accent meandering. Where Styles’s Britishness is indefinite, Williams’s remains defining. His brand of laddish Noughties bravado courses through everything from his lyrics to his proclivity for oversharing onstage, like someone holding court in a smoking area.

 

Robbie Williams – today 48, happily married and sober – is better off without the approval of the US. He has instead been elevated to national treasure status here, and will play to huge, adoring British and European audiences for as long as he wishes. He remains the patron saint of pub singers, the guardian angel of the end of the night – and the man who, without doubt, puts the “Brit” in “celebrity”.

 

[see also: “Don’t Worry Darling” review: A derivative let-down]

 

Topics in this article: Pop music, Robbie Williams

 

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/music-...ritish-pop-star

 

 

I found this article very interesting especially the comparison of Robbie & Harry , both have what I would call that 'interesting' edge to them which keeps people looking in their direction ( including the press ) whether they like them or not

Yes!

 

Photo, the whole photo shoot, single, the song itself, the album, XXV version...

 

No Regrets forever!

 

It was time when I just started to listen his discography early autumn 2002.

I knew (and had on cassetes) about Swing, Sing and It's Only Us song by the moment and decided to buy his MP3 compilation which has included all previous albums and some singles.

When I started to listen IBEY I understood already after 3rd song (Strong-No Regrets-Millennium) that I was already in love in singer and this album. Exactly from this point I've really started be his fan.

 

Oh, by the way, there also was Back or Good punk version and I liked this a lot =))

Yes!

 

Photo, the whole photo shoot, single, the song itself, the album, XXV version...

 

No Regrets forever!

 

It was a time when I just started to listen his discography early autumn 2002.

I knew (and had these two albums on cassetes) only about Swing, Sing and also It's Only Us song by the moment and decided to buy his MP3 compilation which has included all previous albums and some singles.

When had I started to listen IBEY I understood already after 3rd song (Strong-No Regrets-Millennium) that I was already in love in singer and this album. Exactly from this point I've really started be his fan.

 

Oh, by the way, there also was Back or Good punk version and I liked this a lot =))

Great story Alex - I love that you can pin point when you became a fan ^_^

Edited by Better Man

Great story Alex - I love that you can pin point when you became a fan ^_^

 

 

I was sitting on a bar stool in a pub on SAT AUG 2nd 2003 & this guy in the pub started telling us about Robbie Williams whom I had never heard of before , I had not even heard of Take That but it seems everyone else did :lol: . Anyway on he came & I was totally blown away & said I need to look this guy's music up & see what I'm missing . Been a fan since then.

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