nice

Listen to the latest podcast from Matt & Lucy where they talk to Robbie about his current tour - details & links below

Video thanks to https://www.youtube.com/@rewindrobbie

Jul 20, 2025 #robbiewilliams #britpoptour #musicpodcast

Exclusive! Rob tells us how he’s loving life on the Britpop Tour! From climbing the rocket each night, to how it feels sharing photos of his family, Rob is heartfelt and honest as always. Our Britpop Tour Special episode is out now. Not only do we hear directly from Rob, but EIGHT amazing fans join us to relive their unforgettable tour memories: ☀️Kevin ‘with a tan’ from Edinburgh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Debbie from Dundee 🇩🇪Pati, Shirley & Levke from Germany 🇪🇸Edgar from Spain 🎤👧 and our youngest ever guest, 5 year old Dora with her mum Leanne!

Available on all podcast platforms now. #robbiewilliams #britpoptour #musicpodcast #britpop

Robbie Williams Rewind Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/robbie-williams-rewind/id1585054016

EP48 - Britpop tour fan stories & check-in with Robbie! - Robbie Williams Rewind | Podcast on Spotify

Robbie Williams: a songwriting icon in four different decades

After picking up the PRS for Music Icon Award at The Ivors 2025, Robbie and collaborators Rufus Wainwright and Stephen Duffy appraise his creative legacy.

• By Jordan Bassett 24 Jul 2025

Sometime in the early-to-mid-noughties, Robbie Williams took a very short shower. He was lathering up at his Hollywood Hills mansion where work was underway on Intensive Care, the multi-million selling monster of pop he created in a makeshift bedroom studio with Duran Duran co-founder and cult songwriter-producer Stephen Duffy.

‘We kind of jammed up riffs and he’d be singing all the time,’ Stephen tells M. ‘We were doing something — I can’t remember what it was; Ghosts or something — and we’d got the structure. He said, “I’m just gonna…” and he went off and had a shower. But halfway through the shower, he came back — still with shampoo in his hair — and started singing the lyrics. I have a picture of this great moment: this man with bubbles in his hair, grasping his Shure SM58 [microphone] and emoting.’

It’s a story that speaks to the seemingly instinctive way in which Robbie crafts the melodies and lyrics that have become soundtracks to our lives. During a solo career that’s spanned more than a quarter of a century, from Angels to Feel and – hell – even Rock DJ, Robbie is one of the most successful songwriters of his generation. The numbers speak for themselves: 15 UK number one albums, a record 18 BRIT Awards and over 85m album sales worldwide.

Robbie added yet another accolade to his collection at The Ivors 2025: the prestigious PRS for Music Icon Award. His fifth Ivor Novello Award, he follows the likes of The Cure’s Robert Smith and Simon Gallup and indie-pop titans James in receiving the honour, which was awarded ‘in recognition of a songwriting career that has touched millions and defined a generation’. However, despite having co-written his solo material since leaving the creative constraints of Take That to record his 1997 debut Life Thru A Lens, Robbie doesn’t always get the credit he deserves as a songwriter.

'I suppose, over the years, I haven’t asked to be taken seriously — and people have paid me in kind.’ - Robbie Williams

Reflecting on his win backstage at Ivors, the superstar told M: ‘It might as well be [me winning this award], if I look around me and just do brass tacks on the landscape of what I’ve done and what I’ve achieved. It’s very interesting to be sat in a room and only you know that you do melodies and lyrics; you bare your soul and be sensitive to the masses. But only you know which bit you’re doing! I suppose, over the years, I haven’t asked to be taken seriously — and people have paid me in kind.’

Rufus Wainwright, who’s co-written a handful of tracks with Robbie over the years, agrees that his pal’s penmanship should be held in higher regard: ‘Robbie is one of the great audiophiles of all time. He knows so much about music from A to Z and really tries to imbue his work with a deep sense of musical history. I think he deserves more credit for being so passionate about what he does and for having so much knowledge.’

Stephen agrees. He reckons that Robbie’s super-celebrity status often eclipses his standing as a songwriter: ‘I suppose that’s the thing about such huge fame: it takes over from the music and the quality of the music.’

Robbie reached superstardom thanks to 1997's Angels, his multi-platinum fifth solo single. The song is credited to Robbie and Guy Chambers, the songwriting collaborator with whom the former enjoyed a serious purple patch from the late nineties until a fallout in the early noughties. In a bonus DVD packaged with the CD edition of 2005’s Intensive Care, Stephen recalled first meeting Robbie on Top Of The Pops in 1996 when the latter was performing his cover of George Michael’s Freedom (a pointed choice of debut solo single given his acrimonious split from Take That). Explaining why it had taken them so long to work together, Stephen noted that Robbie had gone on to be in ‘the most successful writing relationship since Lennon-McCartney, so one felt a little reticent…’

Here was another pointed statement, it seems. After all, one of those partnerships is h

held in the highest critical esteem, the other… less so. Since the ‘imperial phase’ of those Guy Chambers years and that smash album with Stephen, Robbie has gone on to collaborate with countless songwriters and producers (the old Chambers-Williams magic has even been revived in recent years). The heavy metal banger Rocket, the lead single from his upcoming thirteenth studio album Britpop, was co-written with a quartet of songwriters that includes Robbie and — believe it or not — Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, who also shreds on the track.

Stephen, who left Duran Duran to furrow his idiosyncratic path in the late seventies, reckons the singer could go it entirely alone if he wanted to: ‘My take on it is that the only reason that Robbie collaborates at all is that he likes the company.’

During the Intensive Care sessions, Stephen encouraged Robbie to follow his own muse: ‘He’s so good at hooks that I just thought, “He’ll come up with a hook on whatever instrument he’s placed in front of” — even though he didn’t know how to play any of them! That’s where the songs came from: him playing the keyboards and me jamming along, putting up a drum machine and him playing the bass.’ The songwriting on these sessions was split fairly equally, he adds: ‘Although I probably did more finessing of the music while he did more finessing of the lyrics.’

Perhaps, though, these collaborators have each had a hand in helping Robbie’s songwriting to evolve over the years. The Britpop-style tracks he created with Guy, for instance, gave way to sparkly electropop with eighties synth pioneer Trevor Horn on 2009's Reality Killed The Video Star. Throughout it all, even when his work has explored his challenges with addiction and mental health, there’s been an accessible lightness of touch. ‘What’s great,’ says Rufus, ‘is that on one hand Robbie has a very serious darkness to him, but he counters that with a joyous sense of humour. His unbalanced is very balanced.’

‘Robbie's so good at hooks that I just thought, “He’ll come up with a hook on whatever instrument he’s placed in front of” — even though he didn’t know how to play any of them!' - Stephen Duffy

Even when success allowed Robbie to indulge his formative love of big band music, resulting in 2001’s Swing When You’re Winning and 2013’s Swings Both Ways, he wove original material in with the standards. Rufus trades jokey come-ons with Robbie throughout the latter album’s title track, which the pair wrote with Guy Chambers.

‘I think what I love most about that period,’ says Rufus, 'is that I felt totally safe, accepted and admired by a heterosexual man, and that is something that should really happen more often between the boys.’

Speaking to this writer for NME last year, Robbie revealed the concept behind the upcoming Britpop: ‘I wanted to make the album that [I’d make] if I’d left Take That now. Knowing what I know, what is it that I would have made?’ This, combined with the retro title, might suggest a nostalgic nineties-style retread — a notion that the bombastic Rocket blew to smithereens upon its release. Here was another reminder that you never know what to expect from Robbie Williams the songwriter.

Whatever his first studio album in six years might sound like, you can bet it’ll be crafted with a lot of love. ‘He called [our] album Intensive Care because of the amount of care we took over it,’ Stephen says warmly. ‘He thought we’d put intense care into it.’

Two decades since Robbie was so inspired to create he jumped out of the shower, it’s the mark of a legitimate icon whose legacy as a songwriter scrubs up very well indeed.

This article features in the latest special edition of M Magazine, which you can read in full here.

Robbie Williams: a songwriting icon in four different decades | M Magazine

What a pleasant article... Not many new facts but very good quotes from great musicians. Happy to read the material like this.

18 hours ago, Sydney11 said:

Robbie Williams: a songwriting icon in four different decades

After picking up the PRS for Music Icon Award at The Ivors 2025, Robbie and collaborators Rufus Wainwright and Stephen Duffy appraise his creative legacy.

• By Jordan Bassett 24 Jul 2025

Sometime in the early-to-mid-noughties, Robbie Williams took a very short shower. He was lathering up at his Hollywood Hills mansion where work was underway on Intensive Care, the multi-million selling monster of pop he created in a makeshift bedroom studio with Duran Duran co-founder and cult songwriter-producer Stephen Duffy.

‘We kind of jammed up riffs and he’d be singing all the time,’ Stephen tells M. ‘We were doing something — I can’t remember what it was; Ghosts or something — and we’d got the structure. He said, “I’m just gonna…” and he went off and had a shower. But halfway through the shower, he came back — still with shampoo in his hair — and started singing the lyrics. I have a picture of this great moment: this man with bubbles in his hair, grasping his Shure SM58 [microphone] and emoting.’

It’s a story that speaks to the seemingly instinctive way in which Robbie crafts the melodies and lyrics that have become soundtracks to our lives. During a solo career that’s spanned more than a quarter of a century, from Angels to Feel and – hell – even Rock DJ, Robbie is one of the most successful songwriters of his generation. The numbers speak for themselves: 15 UK number one albums, a record 18 BRIT Awards and over 85m album sales worldwide.

Robbie added yet another accolade to his collection at The Ivors 2025: the prestigious PRS for Music Icon Award. His fifth Ivor Novello Award, he follows the likes of The Cure’s Robert Smith and Simon Gallup and indie-pop titans James in receiving the honour, which was awarded ‘in recognition of a songwriting career that has touched millions and defined a generation’. However, despite having co-written his solo material since leaving the creative constraints of Take That to record his 1997 debut Life Thru A Lens, Robbie doesn’t always get the credit he deserves as a songwriter.

Reflecting on his win backstage at Ivors, the superstar told M: ‘It might as well be [me winning this award], if I look around me and just do brass tacks on the landscape of what I’ve done and what I’ve achieved. It’s very interesting to be sat in a room and only you know that you do melodies and lyrics; you bare your soul and be sensitive to the masses. But only you know which bit you’re doing! I suppose, over the years, I haven’t asked to be taken seriously — and people have paid me in kind.’

Rufus Wainwright, who’s co-written a handful of tracks with Robbie over the years, agrees that his pal’s penmanship should be held in higher regard: ‘Robbie is one of the great audiophiles of all time. He knows so much about music from A to Z and really tries to imbue his work with a deep sense of musical history. I think he deserves more credit for being so passionate about what he does and for having so much knowledge.’

Stephen agrees. He reckons that Robbie’s super-celebrity status often eclipses his standing as a songwriter: ‘I suppose that’s the thing about such huge fame: it takes over from the music and the quality of the music.’

Robbie reached superstardom thanks to 1997's Angels, his multi-platinum fifth solo single. The song is credited to Robbie and Guy Chambers, the songwriting collaborator with whom the former enjoyed a serious purple patch from the late nineties until a fallout in the early noughties. In a bonus DVD packaged with the CD edition of 2005’s Intensive Care, Stephen recalled first meeting Robbie on Top Of The Pops in 1996 when the latter was performing his cover of George Michael’s Freedom (a pointed choice of debut solo single given his acrimonious split from Take That). Explaining why it had taken them so long to work together, Stephen noted that Robbie had gone on to be in ‘the most successful writing relationship since Lennon-McCartney, so one felt a little reticent…’

Here was another pointed statement, it seems. After all, one of those partnerships is h

held in the highest critical esteem, the other… less so. Since the ‘imperial phase’ of those Guy Chambers years and that smash album with Stephen, Robbie has gone on to collaborate with countless songwriters and producers (the old Chambers-Williams magic has even been revived in recent years). The heavy metal banger Rocket, the lead single from his upcoming thirteenth studio album Britpop, was co-written with a quartet of songwriters that includes Robbie and — believe it or not — Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, who also shreds on the track.

Stephen, who left Duran Duran to furrow his idiosyncratic path in the late seventies, reckons the singer could go it entirely alone if he wanted to: ‘My take on it is that the only reason that Robbie collaborates at all is that he likes the company.’

During the Intensive Care sessions, Stephen encouraged Robbie to follow his own muse: ‘He’s so good at hooks that I just thought, “He’ll come up with a hook on whatever instrument he’s placed in front of” — even though he didn’t know how to play any of them! That’s where the songs came from: him playing the keyboards and me jamming along, putting up a drum machine and him playing the bass.’ The songwriting on these sessions was split fairly equally, he adds: ‘Although I probably did more finessing of the music while he did more finessing of the lyrics.’

Perhaps, though, these collaborators have each had a hand in helping Robbie’s songwriting to evolve over the years. The Britpop-style tracks he created with Guy, for instance, gave way to sparkly electropop with eighties synth pioneer Trevor Horn on 2009's Reality Killed The Video Star. Throughout it all, even when his work has explored his challenges with addiction and mental health, there’s been an accessible lightness of touch. ‘What’s great,’ says Rufus, ‘is that on one hand Robbie has a very serious darkness to him, but he counters that with a joyous sense of humour. His unbalanced is very balanced.’

Even when success allowed Robbie to indulge his formative love of big band music, resulting in 2001’s Swing When You’re Winning and 2013’s Swings Both Ways, he wove original material in with the standards. Rufus trades jokey come-ons with Robbie throughout the latter album’s title track, which the pair wrote with Guy Chambers.

‘I think what I love most about that period,’ says Rufus, 'is that I felt totally safe, accepted and admired by a heterosexual man, and that is something that should really happen more often between the boys.’

Speaking to this writer for NME last year, Robbie revealed the concept behind the upcoming Britpop: ‘I wanted to make the album that [I’d make] if I’d left Take That now. Knowing what I know, what is it that I would have made?’ This, combined with the retro title, might suggest a nostalgic nineties-style retread — a notion that the bombastic Rocket blew to smithereens upon its release. Here was another reminder that you never know what to expect from Robbie Williams the songwriter.

Whatever his first studio album in six years might sound like, you can bet it’ll be crafted with a lot of love. ‘He called [our] album Intensive Care because of the amount of care we took over it,’ Stephen says warmly. ‘He thought we’d put intense care into it.’

Two decades since Robbie was so inspired to create he jumped out of the shower, it’s the mark of a legitimate icon whose legacy as a songwriter scrubs up very well indeed.

This article features in the latest special edition of M Magazine, which you can read in full here.

Robbie Williams: a songwriting icon in four different decades | M Magazine

That's a really good article Tess -thanks for posting 😀

On 25/07/2025 at 06:40, Better Man said:

What a pleasant article... Not many new facts but very good quotes from great musicians. Happy to read the material like this.

12 hours ago, Laura130262 said:

That's a really good article Tess -thanks for posting 😀

How true is this statement, something I have been saying for years !

Quote

'I suppose, over the years, I haven’t asked to be taken seriously — and people have paid me in kind.’ - Robbie Williams

11 hours ago, Sydney11 said:

How true is this statement, something I have been saying for years !

Quote

'I suppose, over the years, I haven’t asked to be taken seriously — and people have paid me in kind.’ - Robbie Williams

Yes it is true - he's said that before and I thought so too

Iv'e been catching up on some Robbie Williams Rewind podcasts & came across the interviews with Chris Briggs, Rob's Record Company A & R man. The interview is in two parts as Chris tells his journey with Rob at his own pace. Really good interview & huge thanks to Lucy & Matt .

Part 1 & Part 2

Special - Chris Briggs, Rob's …–Robbie Williams Rewind – Apple Podcasts

Special - Chris Briggs, Rob's …–Robbie Williams Rewind – Apple Podcasts

Edited August 5Aug 5 by Sydney11

Thanks for reminding this interview, Tess.

Not much time to listen the guys more attentively but really really want.

They do an amazing work for sure, love them for this.

12 minutes ago, Better Man said:

Thanks for reminding this interview, Tess.

Not much time to listen the guys more attentively but really really want.

They do an amazing work for sure, love them for this.

Yes, it's worth a listen if you get the time at some stage. Takes you behind the scenes of making the various albums & the writers/producers/musicians he worked with. They also talked about his management relationships over the years & their dealings with the record companies . Also interesting to hear about Chris's role as A & R man , he has been with Rob since the beginning of his career. Really good interview.

Chris Briggs gets a special mention in the movie doesn't he.

On 06/08/2025 at 00:28, Laura130262 said:

Chris Briggs gets a special mention in the movie doesn't he.

I cannot remember Laura, I need to watch it again . Impressive guy though, I liked his interview very much .

Yes, he mentioned :)

Robbie Williams invests in alcohol-free beer brand

11 August 2025By Sarah Neish

The Let me entertain you singer has bought into Australian 0% beer brand Heaps Normal, saying: “it’s personal for me.”

Teetotal Robbie Williams has joined Heaps Normal as its ‘creative collaborator’, having thrown money behind the brand, which is said to be Australia’s leading independent alcohol-free beer label.

According to Williams, who has been sober for more than 20 years, one of the reasons he chose to invest in Heaps Normal is that he wants to “back a new kind of normal”. “Teaming up with Heaps Normal is personal for me,” said the Angels singer. “I saw what they [Heaps Normal] were doing, creatively and culturally, when I was down in Australia, and I really wanted to get involved. I love the ethos of the Heaps brand, and I’m excited for what we’re going to achieve together around the world”.

Heaps Normal has already kicked off global expansion plans, having soft-launched in the UK in June, with its beers now stocked in more than 170 pubs and retailers throughout Great Britain.

Founded in 2020 by Andy Miller, Ben Holdstock and Jordy Smith, Heaps Normal has already achieved B-Corp status, and has become known for supporting the live music industry.

Creative energy

“Heaps Normal isn’t just about non-alc beer—it’s about culture,” said Andy Miller, co-founder and CEO. “Robbie gets that. He’s been on his own journey and he brings an incredible creative energy that lines up with what we stand for.”

Williams has been vocal about his drug and alcohol addiction, which saw him undergo several stints in rehab. In his four-part Netflix documentary he describes drinking a bottle of vodka a day before Take That rehearsals, and at one point embarking on “a six-day vodka and cocaine bender” in France, which he believes left him “hours away from death”.

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“I was in a state of disarray most of the time,” he said.

Williams reached out to Heaps Normal directly to explore a potential partnership after he discovered the brand during his recent tour of Australia (he performed in Sydney on New Year’s Eve 2024), and says “the relationship grew from there.”

Honest conversations

“For a small, independent business, having Robbie advocating for us and spreading the Heaps Normal ethos to his community is wild,” said Miller. “It’s a long way from the early days when we were getting laughed out of pubs, that’s for sure.” According to Williams, he will be working with Heaps Normal on “creative campaigns and new product ideas – all aimed at sparking more honest conversations about how and why we drink.”

The team behind the brand claims to be “the weirdos redefining normal for the better and celebrating people who do the same. We also make drinks, but we don’t care how much or how little you’re drinking, unless it’s water (yuck).”

Heaps Normal’s core range includes Quiet XPA, Another Lager and Half Day Hazy products.

 

• Robbie Williams invests in alcohol-free beer brand

Edited August 11Aug 11 by Sydney11

Good for him -he's the perfect ambassador for them 👍

Robbie Williams: Why I won’t give my kids phones - and what I really think of Oasis

• 21pm

Listen to a part of the interview here - link below

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2025-08-20/robbie-why-i-wont-give-my-kids-phones-and-what-i-really-think-of-oasis

• Above: Watch Lucrezia Millarini's interview with Robbie Williams

---

Robbie Williams has banned his four children from having phones and compared the internet to a corrosive drug.

Speaking exclusively to ITV News London ahead of a gig in Camden, the singer explained how going online could "ruin" his day, and he wanted to protect his family. Robbie said giving a phone to his children would amount to a form of "abuse", adding: "They don't have phones, they're not going to have phones for as long as humanly possible.

"They are at school, other people have phones. Tough.

"That's as simple as it is. I'm 51. I can't deal with the corrosive nature of the internet, it hurts me, it ruins my day.

"How can I give this drug to a 12-year-old? How can I give this drug to a seven-year-old? It's abuse."

Robbie, originally from Stoke, is playing the most intimate show of his career at Dingwalls in Camden on October 9 to a crowd of 500 people. He will perform tracks from his new album Britpop a day before its release. He spoke to ITV News Presenter Lucrezia Millarini about his family, the resurgence of 90s music and his long-standing rivalry with Oasis after years of famously trading insults.

"We're not exactly friends, but I don't think we're enemies," Robbie said, adding that he'd even accept an offer to perform on stage at Oasis concerts to open their gigs - done this year by Verve singer Richard Ashcroft.

Robbie said: "I'd open for Oasis. In this moment that they're having right now they are omnipresent and they are at the peak zeitgeist.

"I can't compete with that. So I would open for Oasis."

Robbie Williams speaking to ITV News London presenter Lucrezia Millarini

The singer's new album Britpop took around six years to make and is being released at a time so many bands from the 1990s are getting so much attention.

"It was always called Britpop," Robbie explained.

"It's coming out at exactly in the right time that it should be coming out.

"Oasis are back, Blur have done their gigs, Supergrass are about, Pulp are about."

Robbie lives in West London with his wife, actress Ayda Field and their children, Theodora, Colette, Charlton and Beau.

Before launching his solo career, Robbie was part of the boyband Take That, which was behind the hit songs Pray, Everything Changes and Sure.

Take That pictured in January 1993Credit: PA

Last year, he released the biopic, Better Man, in which he is played by a CGI chimpanzee – a comment on how he feels like a "performing monkey". He equalled The Beatles’ record for the most number one albums in the UK chart with the soundtrack becoming his 15th record to top the official albums chart. Other chart-topping albums include I’ve Been Expecting You (1998), Sing When You’re Winning (2000), Escapology (2002), Intensive Care (2005) and Rudebox (2006).

With huge success comes huge global fame, but, surprisingly, Robbie can still walk around the capital without being recognised, even dressed in an eye-catching outfit. Robbie added: "We were on our way to somewhere and I've got this pink outfit on and bejewelled. I look like Elton John's nephew!"We couldn't get to somewhere because there was a protest on and my wife said we're going to be late so we're walking. "I turned to my wife and I went: 'Me? Robbie Williams, dressed in pink, walking in London - Are you mad!?'

"So we walked and we were fine.

"Afterwards we couldn't get picked up [from the restaurant] because of a protest.

"So we walked through Hyde Park and absolutely zero people were like: 'There's Robbie Williams, there's Robbie Williams'".

Above: Video of Robbie Williams dressed in pink strolling through Hyde Park [via Instagram-aydafieldwilliams]

Despite the occasional case of anonymity, Robbie is still frequently recognised by fans and often gets asked for a selfie.

Describing himself as an "introvert doing an extrovert's job", he said he felt anxious meeting so many strangers as part of the job.

"Introverts aren't the best with people and strangers, and that's me," he said.

"I have to meet 20 to 30 strangers a day.

"I'm scared of social interaction but yet I'm expected to have social interaction every day, all day.

"I'm not complaining because I need and I want that, and it's part of my job," Robbie explained.

Find out more about Robbie Williams' new single and his gig at Dingwalls in Camden here.

Robbie Williams: Why I won’t give my kids phones - and what I really think of Oasis | ITV News London

---

Do you remember the first time? Why Britpop nostalgia just won’t go away

Whether it’s Robbie Williams’ new album, a Blur v Oasis play or Britpop romance novels, Alex James and others explain why we’re all still in thrall to the mad-fer-it 90s

Alexis Petridis

Fri 22 Aug 2025 09.00 CEST

It is a Tuesday evening, and in the suitably 1990s environs of Soho’s Groucho Club, Robbie Williams, resplendent in pair of dungarees, is in the process of launching his new album. It’s called Britpop, features some songs co-written with Gaz Coombes of Supergrass, and is, he attests, “the album that I wanted to write and release after I left Take That in 1995”. This was the brief period where he attempted to establish himself as an adjunct to the mid-90s wave of hugely successful UK alt-rock, releasing a string of audibly Oasis-influenced solo singles, palling around Glastonbury with the Gallaghers and temporarily employing one of the band’s inner circle, Creation Records’ former managing director Tim Abbot, as his manager. “I’ve been musically aimless for a little while,” Williams said to the assembled press. “I’ve just spent the last 15 years looking backwards. I think with this album, if I am gonna look backwards, I might as well just clear the decks and go back to the start and head off from there.”

Do you remember the first time? Why Britpop nostalgia just won’t go away

Whether it’s Robbie Williams’ new album, a Blur v Oasis play or Britpop romance novels, Alex James and others explain why we’re all still in thrall to the mad-fer-it 90s

Alexis Petridis

Fri 22 Aug 2025 09.00 CEST

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It is a Tuesday evening, and in the suitably 1990s environs of Soho’s Groucho Club, Robbie Williams, resplendent in pair of dungarees, is in the process of launching his new album. It’s called Britpop, features some songs co-written with Gaz Coombes of Supergrass, and is, he attests, “the album that I wanted to write and release after I left Take That in 1995”. This was the brief period where he attempted to establish himself as an adjunct to the mid-90s wave of hugely successful UK alt-rock, releasing a string of audibly Oasis-influenced solo singles, palling around Glastonbury with the Gallaghers and temporarily employing one of the band’s inner circle, Creation Records’ former managing director Tim Abbot, as his manager. “I’ve been musically aimless for a little while,” Williams said to the assembled press. “I’ve just spent the last 15 years looking backwards. I think with this album, if I am gonna look backwards, I might as well just clear the decks and go back to the start and head off from there.”

‘I’ve just spent the last 15 years looking backwards’ … Robbie Williams at the launch of his new album at The Groucho Club. Photograph: Dave Hogan/Hogan Media/Shutterstock

His determination to revisit the Britpop era feels slightly odd. His Oasis-influenced singles met with declining public interest, nearly scuppering his solo career before Angels and Let Me Entertain You came to the rescue. His relationship with Abbot ended with each suing the other in a dispute over Abbot’s contract (they settled out of court), he later said Oasis were “gigantic bullies” (Liam Gallagher replied that he’d “never bullied anyone in my life”) and when he talked about the period when I interviewed him in 2016, it was in terms of trauma: “There was an indie fundamentalist mentality … I was looked down on when I was in conversation with a lot of people … [it] starts to make you feel agoraphobic and second-guess everything you do”. But his appearance at the Groucho is the latest in a series of 90s-themed publicity stunts by Williams – he’s also unveiled fake blue plaques in Camden, proclaiming it “the home of Britpop”, and Soho’s Berwick Street, where the photograph on the cover of Oasis’s (What’s the Story?) Morning Glory was taken.

All of this is timely at the very least, coming amid a huge wave of nostalgia for Britpop. In part, it’s obviously fuelled by the fact that Blur, Pulp and Oasis have all reformed to considerable acclaim over the past two years, but it also feels more general than just fondness for any one band. It’s as if people have retrospectively fallen in love with “Britpop” as an idea, a signifier of something beyond music, something more nebulous.

The first signs of a notion of Britpop detached from the actual music might have come last year, when a succession of artists who sounded nothing like Blur or Oasis – drum’n’bass star Nia Archives, music producer AG Cook and singer-songwriter Rachel Chinouriri – began adopting the era’s visual signifiers, union jacks and all, and Dua Lipa claimed its “honesty and attitude” had influenced her album Radical Optimism. There have been a succession of Britpop books – a quick search reveals titles called Faster Than a Cannonball, Don’t Look Back in Anger, Feeling Supersonic, A Field Guide to Britpop, The Britpop Bible, The Birth and Impact of Britpop and at least three Britpop-themed romance novels. There are Britpop walking tours, Britpop festivals and a plethora of non-specific Britpop tribute acts.

There is Britpop Classical, a reimagining of the era’s hits with a 20-piece orchestra, fronted by Blur’s Alex James. Inspired, he says, by seeing “everyone arms aloft crying their eyes out, singing along to 90 minutes of hits” when the dance-themed Ministry of Sound Classical headlined the Big Feastival, the festival he hosts on his farm in the Cotswolds, last year.

There are Britpop clothing collections – “classic British countryside meets 90s indie cool … countryside heritage with that Camden edge”, as the press release from designers Maude and Fox puts it – and there is a Britpop play, The Battle, about the feud between Oasis and Blur. It’s been written by novelist John Niven, will star Matthew Horne and is scheduled to open in February.

It’s the idea of theatrical producer Simon Friend, who says he thought the show would initially appeal to a niche audience – “to sell a play that is new, by someone who’s completely unknown in the theatre industry is hard, in fact nigh-on impossible” – but instead found himself booking it on a six-month tour around the provinces: a West End run is to be announced and it’s been optioned for television by Universal.

“About ten years ago, nostalgia for the 80s was really prevalent – the theatrical version of Dirty Dancing could not have been hotter, for instance,” Friend says. “I think there’s a 30 year cycle of nostalgia: ten years ago, the 90s were still in the rear view mirror. Now, if you look at video footage or photos in the 90s, it does feel like a historical period compared to where we’re living now. It looks more fun. There is a certain anarchy about that time that, from a distance, people have a fondness for”.

And there is Britpop wine, lager and cider, also Alex James’s handiwork: he has actually trademarked the word “Britpop”, at least for food and drink. “Trademarking is incredibly tedious, it turns out,” he says. “You have to do it by territory and category. The word ‘Britpop’ used to totally give me the ick, as I think it maybe did for a lot of bands in that era. You know, ‘Britpop rocker Alex James’ – oh, God. I had to take control. So I thought, ‘that actually sounds like a really nice drink’.”

This is Britpop as a branding exercise, which begs the question: what does the word signify? “I guess now it just sort of means good times,” he shrugs. “Maybe when outlooks were more positive, and there was less doom and gloom and scrutiny. Maybe it’s like ‘the swinging 60s’, only not quite as naff. You hear the phrase ‘swinging 60s’ and you’re like ‘yay!’, aren’t you?”

Alex James at the launch of his Britpop Classical Photograph: Alan West/Hogan Media/REX/Shutterstock

The writer and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer agrees. Her contribution to the pantheon of Britpop literature, Uncommon People, was published last year, and she’s just launched a podcast called Talk 90s to Me. “What is it about Britpop that appeals? There was a sense of ‘f*** you, we’re going to have a good time’, which Liam Gallagher definitely epitomised. And there’s an optimism – the gatekeepers had changed, different people were running Radio 1 and Top of the Pops, and a load of bands became absolutely huge without really changing what they did, or compromising. Blur didn’t change, Pulp didn’t change, Oasis obviously never changed – they just got worse. Someone like Tricky, who record companies would previously have told to f*** off, got really big.

“It felt like youth culture was winning. You couldn’t believe it was happening, and there’s a sense of optimism attached to that. That’s an amazing feeling that can be sensed by others.”

You can see why people old enough to remember the mid-90s first-hand might be drawn to reliving their youth 30 years on – generally your teens and 20s look appealingly carefree from the perspective of middle age – but the striking thing about the current wave of Britpop nostalgia is that its market isn’t exclusively drawn from the ranks of forty- and fiftysomethings. Alex James says he was “really, really surprised” at “how many kids, people my kids’ age” were at Blur’s 2023 reunion gigs. Promoting Uncommon People at literary festivals, Sawyer was struck by the audiences she attracted. “I thought it would just be people my age, right? What I didn’t expect was people in their late 30s and early 40s. Everybody, I think, is always slightly obsessed with the era when they were just born: things that were going on that were adult, that seemed exciting and just beyond you on the telly. And then, every time, there were always at least a couple of 17-year-olds, mostly girls, interested in music, want to be in bands, and they want to talk about Elastica.”

Youth culture without compromise … Elastica
in 1995) Photograph: Gie Knaeps/Getty Images

If you buy the idea that what the Britpop brand represents is optimism, positivity and youth culture winning without compromise then you can see its appeal to a 17-year-old in 2025. Who wouldn’t hanker after the notion of a prelapsarian world before the scrutiny of social media, 9/11, the rise of the “alt-right” et al? And the era’s “f*** you, we’re gonna have a good time” excesses look alluring in an age of wellness influencers and constant cameraphone surveillance.

Of course, they’re being sold a very rose-tinted and reductive notion of the past. The Britpop era played out alongside the Conservative government’s back-to-basics campaign, which felt a little like a culture war, replete with talk from John Major about “traditional values falling away” and having “allowed things to happen that we should never have tolerated”. Unemployment rates were around twice as high as they are now and there was genocide in eastern Europe, while even Sawyer notes that when she interviewed Garbage’s Shirley Manson and Sleeper’s Louise Wener for her book, “it was like we already knew each other, because we’d been through the 90s as women, like you’d been through some kind of trench warfare”. But that’s nostalgia for you: the past with the crap bits tactfully excised.

Given his own experience of the mid-90s you might expect Robbie Williams’ take on Britpop to be less idealistic. Certainly the cover of his album hints at that – it’s a photo of him at Glastonbury in 1995 on a gallery wall, being defaced by protesters. But when the subject comes up at The Groucho Club, he bats it away, restricting himself to talking jokily about the tracksuit he’s wearing in the photo. “So that’s the album cover,” he concludes. “We’re Britpopping.”

Uncommon People by Miranda Sawyer is out now, published by John Murray. The Big Feastival is at Alex James’s Farm, Oxfordshire, 22-24 August. Britpop by Robbie Williams is released 10 October by Columbia Records. The Battle opens at Birmingham Rep, 11 February 2026.

Do you remember the first time? Why Britpop nostalgia just won’t go away | Pop and rock | The Guardian

Nothing like a bit of feel good nostalgia I say 😊. People need it right now, young & old. I read that even Noel Gallagher is getting emotional 😂

Sakshi Narula

@mssakshinarula

·

7h

Songs Of The Day. What happened to music...we were doing okay until the 2000s. Feel, Robbie Williams...such a stunning song and stunning music video. Daryl Hannah is a divine goddess.And Dido...her voice ♥️" I have never heard a bad song by her. Just beautiful

Edited August 22Aug 22 by Sydney11

Paul Tweed represents Dublin songwriter in case against Robbie Williams over hit song Angels

1 Sep 2025

Paul Tweed

Defamation lawyer Paul Tweed has confirmed he is representing Dublin singer-songwriter Ray Heffernan in a landmark legal case against Robbie Williams over the authorship of the hit song Angels.

Mr Tweed, who has advised stars including Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, Sylvester Stallone and Justin Timberlake, told the Sunday Independent: “My firm has been consulted by Ray Heffernan and our lawyers are considering legal options for him.”

Pop impresario Louis Walsh, who arranged studio time for Mr Heffernan and Williams in Dublin in 1996, is understood to still hold the original cassette of their early recording, then titled Loving Angels Instead.

Mr Heffernan has long maintained he co-wrote Angels with Mr Williams. He believes a new EU copyright measure – the “bestseller clause” – gives him a chance to secure a share of royalties. The clause allows creators to claim additional remuneration for works that achieve major commercial success.

He has said he is seeking 33 per cent of the song’s future royalties.

Mr Heffernan has described how he met Williams in Dublin’s Globe pub at Christmas 1996, shortly after the singer left Take That. The pair agreed to collaborate, and Mr Heffernan contributed the first verse, part of the chorus and some of the second verse, written earlier that year in Paris after his partner suffered a miscarriage.

Mr Williams later took the song to Guy Chambers, who helped shape it into the final version.

Paul Tweed represents Dublin songwriter in case against Robbie Williams over hit song Angels | Irish Legal News

Edited Monday at 09:182 days by Sydney11