Robbie Williams: "Ich möchte diese Jahre nicht noch einmal erleben müssen" (via @AZ_Augsburg) https://azol.de/63670631

 

It's a good interview but I don't know how to translate it on Twitter!

Here you go Laura, I usually just right-click on mouse & translator option pops up ;)

 

 

Robbie Williams: "I don't want to have to relive these years

 

The pop star is currently on holiday, but will soon be performing in Munich in front of 100,000 people. A conversation about mental health, nudity and golf.

 

 

Robbie, what does it look like?

 

Robbie Williams: Best, best.

 

Where are you right now?

 

Williams: I am in the South of France. Family. It's hot here. Almost too hot.

 

Do you still enjoy the holiday?

 

Williams: Very much so. We meet people here all the time, which is a little unusual for me. My wife is very, very social and communicative, and I had thought of myself that I would do the same when I was with her. But my body and my psyche are not so well able to always be among people. And so it's a strange mixture for me now: On the one hand, I feel super sexy in the south of France with my great wife. On the other hand, I quickly become absolutely overwhelmed when I am forced to make small talk with billionaires again (laughs).

 

You may be working on becoming one yourself, right?

 

Williams: Well, slowly. But yes, I can cope. I have some very good friends who have an incredible amount of money and are still totally lovely people. Whether someone is nice or on your wavelength has nothing to do with the person's account balance. Anyway, I still have to work a bit on being a little more open and reaching out to people, while at the same time taking care of my mental health. Either way, I've recently learned that it's not good for me to stay away from people until the end of my life. Above all, I want to finally learn how to go among people in a sober state.

 

But you haven't been drinking for a long time, have you?

 

Williams: I haven't had a drink in 22 years. The adjustment process is very slow.

 

On August 27th you will play a gigantic concert in front of over 100,000 people in Munich. So hiding from the world isn't an option anyway, is it?

 

Williams: Oh yes, I am extremely grateful for this concert. Oh, I'm super grateful to Germany as such, period. I'm 48 years old, I've been around for an infinite amount of time, and you still love me. The Germans are very loyal, just a wonderful audience, incredibly warm-hearted too. So as my career continues, I am becoming more and more grateful to Germany. When I said "Grow old with me" almost twenty years ago, Germany listened carefully and replied: "Gladly Rob, we do".

 

You're not that old yet.

 

Williams: Well, honestly, if you're a "pop star," then you're taking part in a game for young men. I've definitely been playing in the alt-men's team of pop for a long time. I am a veteran of my profession, there is no doubt about that.

 

You sing in "Eternity" that youth is wasted on young people ("Youth is wasted on the young"). Would you like to be in your early 20s again?

 

Williams: No, not at all! I sometimes think back to this phase in my life, but never with melancholy or longing. I don't want to have to relive these years.

 

You really don't miss any of what young Robbie had?

 

Williams: Okay, I'd like to have my working back from back then. If the vortices were all still in line and the shock absorbers in between were still doing their job properly, that would be very nice. But apart from the intervertebral discs, you can keep the damn twenties real (laughs).

 

Is young people generally overrated?

 

Williams: Maybe not for other people, you can of course enjoy life as a young person extremely. But for me personally, this time was not so great. It's really a shame when I think about the fact that the most successful years of my life took place behind the lock and key of my messed-up brain. I have been a prisoner of my miserable mental state for far too long. So I certainly don't have to go back to jail in my own head.

 

However, you visit the old, tormented Robbie in your new song "Lost", which is about these years and your feelings back then. So is it something else to revive the past in your music, your art?

 

Williams (considers): Yes, it does. There is something very cathartic about mentally visiting this lost place with the safety and security of a middle-aged man and in this context being able to flush out other poisons that are still in my body due to previous experiences and debauchery.

 

The poison is slowly but surely leaving your body?

 

Williams: Yes, but it's still a constant struggle. The balance in my body and in my mind is formed and renegotiated again and again by sufficient sleep and a reasonable diet and the people with whom I surround myself. For me, psychological well-being requires constant, good care. Which is not easy for a guy like me who is lethargic to change and discipline. Yes, to make a long story short, I'm still looking for the ideal balance. I have to work with what I have and cope with the Robbie as he is right now.

 

A few weeks ago, at a performance in Saint Tropez, you spoke very openly about your mental illness and your addictions. In general, society has opened up to these questions ...

 

Williams: ... I've always talked about these things, but it's true, people have been listening to me more closely for some time now. I have been racking my brain for ages as to why I am the way I am, and what is wrong with me and why I have to suffer so much, and I received no kindness, no benevolence, no empathy for it. I was condemned with the usual sayings like "Pull yourself together" or "What do you want to complain about?". I think today people understand that even rich, famous people can suffer from poor mental health. It is a great relief that we are now living in a time when mental health problems are accepted as a reality for very many people.

 

To come to your album: "XXV" is very opulent and beautifully made. How was it for you to re-record the old hits with the Dutch metropolis Orkest?

 

Williams: I think it's a nice idea to revisit the old songs with the distance of years or decades and to give them a little more gravity, a little more weight through the reworking. For someone like me, who is constantly running in the hamster wheel, always has the next goal in mind and still wants to tear something in his career, it's good to see that I was better than I thought at the time.

 

That means you like your own songs better today than you used to?

 

Williams: Yes, I look at them with more love. It's tough to be a perfectionist who finds everything he does negative and inadequate. Therefore, it is relieving to be able to dedicate myself to these songs today and to be able to admire them instead of hating and despising them.

 

You sit in the pose of auguste Rodin's famous "thinker" on the cover of your "XXV" album – splinter-naked. What kind of relationship do you have with your naked body

 

Williams: I have no problem with being naked. I just have a problem with how I look naked. What you see on the cover is a computer-generated version of the person who looks a bit like me.

 

Did you still do something for your shape before you sat down in pose?

 

Williams: The computer didn't care if I was in shape.

 

There are plenty of nudist beaches in the south of France. Would you like to dare to make yourself free there?

 

Williams: No, please! I think if I had a bigger penis, I might try nudism. But since this is not the case, I leave it.

 

I'm sorry to hear that.

 

Williams: Okay. I'm 48. I got used to it (laughs).

 

You're an avid golfer and you even recently launched a golf clothing collection with J. Lindeberg. What does golf do for you – mentally and physically?

 

Williams: The wonderful thing about golf is that it focuses me. Without such a scaffolding, such a safety net, my head tends to go to unhealthy territories. The golf course is such a safe place for me. You're on the move, you're concentrating, you're getting serotonin, and you're just thinking about one thing – what a shitty golfer you are (laughs).

 

Now it starts again.

 

Williams: Seriously. For the amount of time I invest in golfing, I'm probably the worst golfer in the world.

 

Info: British singer Robbie Williams, 48, born in Staffordshire, will release his new album "XXV" on September 9 – on which he has re-recorded his greatest hits from his 25-year solo career with a Dutch orchestra. On August 27, Williams, who became famous with "Take That", will give his only concert in Germany in Munich.

 

 

https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/kultur...id63670631.html

A few weeks ago, at a performance in Saint Tropez, you spoke very openly about your mental illness and your addictions. In general, society has opened up to these questions ...

 

Williams: ... I've always talked about these things, but it's true, people have been listening to me more closely for some time now. I have been racking my brain for ages as to why I am the way I am, and what is wrong with me and why I have to suffer so much, and I received no kindness, no benevolence, no empathy for it. I was condemned with the usual sayings like "Pull yourself together" or "What do you want to complain about?". I think today people understand that even rich, famous people can suffer from poor mental health. It is a great relief that we are now living in a time when mental health problems are accepted as a reality for very many people.

 

How true is that :mellow:

I am always happy when he has an interested and serious interviewer as then his answers are serious and very thoughtful

@1562521055599951874

Robbie Williams’ 20 greatest songs – ranked!

 

As Williams releases XXV, an orchestral reworking of his greatest hits, we revisit the original songs in the versions you actually want to hear

 

by Alexis Petridis

 

 

20. Sensational (2016)

Williams is a far better lyricist than he has been given credit for. Tucked away on The Heavy Entertainment Show, Sensational is a witty, incisive skewering of the occasionally fraught relationship between artist and audience: “I love you ’cause you love me, and I wish that you could always stay. Now go away.”

 

19. Candy (2012)

Most of Williams’s oeuvre has improved with age – the quality of his big hits is easier to appreciate now that they are not omnipresent – but Candy, co-written with Gary Barlow, remains a guilty pleasure: it is almost wilfully cheesy and maddeningly catchy. As a piece of unrepentant bubblegum pop, it ticks every box.

 

18. Tripping (2005)

Tripping looks awful on paper: the lyrics include a quote commonly misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi, the sound is reggae-influenced – or at least reggae by way of the early 80s Clash. It is melodically subtle and downbeat – at least by Williams single standards – but curiously it works.

 

 

17. Motherf***er (2016)

Long before mental health became a hot topic in pop music, Williams was laying bare his struggles in song. Motherf***er is the most startling of the lot: addressed to his children, it details generations of illness they might inherit: “I’d like to sing a song that says that you’ll be fine, but … I’d be lying.”

 

16. Morning Sun (2009)

Williams subsequently took to deriding the Trevor Horn-produced Reality Killed the Video Star as “half-arsed” and dubbing it Let Me Underwhelm You, but its opening track is great. Lovely melody, grandiose orchestration, lyrics that – typically – fret about reviews and star ratings and Williams’ own ambition: “All I wanted was the world.”

 

15. Let Love Be Your Energy (2000)

An infinitely more convincing take on Beatle-influenced alt-rock than the pallid Oasis-isms of 1997’s Old Before I Die and Lazy Days, Let Love Be Your Energy barrels confidently out of the speakers, a killer song atop wall of distorted guitars, its arrangement decorated with nods to I Am the Walrus and Penny Lane.

 

14. She’s Madonna (2006)

It would be lovely to retrospectively claim that Rudebox – the album that ended Williams’ imperial phase at a stroke – is a lost left-field pop masterpiece, but it still sounds confused and patchy: the product of an artist who wants to do something different but hasn’t worked out what. Still, the good bits are great, not least this witty, Kraftwerk-y Pet Shop Boys collaboration.

 

13. Go Gentle (2013)

Amid the camp jokes and Great American Songbook standards on Swings Both Ways lurked Go Gentle, a beautifully understated paean to his daughter, audibly influenced not by the swing era, but the sound of grownup, late-60s LA pop – Harry Nilsson, Jimmy Webb-era Glen Campbell.

 

12. Rock DJ (2000)

You got the feeling that Williams, a fan of Ian Dury, saw Rock DJ as his tribute to the Blockheads’ disco-influenced hits: here, the backing comes from Barry White’s mid-tempo It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me, while the rhythm of lyrics is audibly inspired by the Blockheads’ Reasons to Be Cheerful (Part 3).

 

 

11. Feel (2002)

The sound of a man on top of the world – the accompanying Escapology album went platinum in more than 14 countries – protesting “I’m not sure I understand the role that I’ve been given”, the resolutely downcast lyrics rubbing against the tune’s soaring, orchestra-assisted uplift.

 

10. She’s the One (1998)

“He nicked my pig and killed it, but he gave me enough bacon to live off for four years,” said World Party’s Karl Wallinger after Williams covered his 1997 album track. It’s a great song, but Williams’s less fragile, less Beatles-y take turned it into the kind of single that goes platinum.

 

9. Let Me Entertain You (1997)

Long established as Williams’s set-opening theme song, it is easy to overlook the fact that Let Me Entertain You’s lyrics aren’t about the singer’s needy desire for an audience: they are a genuinely witty drawing of a man desperately trying to talk someone into bed. Bizarre but true fact: it began life as, of all things, a drum’n’bass track.

 

8. No Regrets (1998)

Williams spent his early solo career spitting bile at his former Take That bandmates in interviews, but while his musical summation of their split has the odd barbed line, its overall tone is not bitter so much as crestfallen and, well, regretful: it sounds like a sigh, haunted by what might have been.

 

7. Lovelight (2006)

A highlight amid the mess of Rudebox, the Mark Ronson-produced Lovelight is not just a fantastic song, but a weirdly prescient one. Sixteen years on, its falsetto-vocal and blend of Daft Punk electronics with super-smooth yacht-rock-y disco sounds very now: frankly, if Harry Styles released it tomorrow, we would never hear the end of it.

 

 

6. Supreme (2000)

Prime evidence for how good the Robbie Williams/Guy Chambers songwriting team was at its best, Supreme has a gorgeous chanson-inspired melody; the way it teases its passing similarity to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive in the lyrics before finally letting rip with a string sample from the 1979 hit is inspired.

 

5. Angels (1997)

Angels was so ubiquitous for so long that it is almost impossible for anyone of a certain age to listen to it objectively: throughout the late 90s and 00s, it wasn’t so much a song as an unavoidable fact of daily life. Most pop songwriters would kill to come up with something with such impact and longevity.

 

 

4. Advertising Space (2005)

Intensive Care, Williams’s first album without Chambers, is sorely underrated. Co-written by 80s pop star turned cult folk-rocker Stephen Duffy, Advertising Space is a ballad as good as anything the singer ever recorded: an emotive, epic meditation on the death of Elvis and the strained relationship between art and commerce.

 

 

3. Kids (2000)

If Williams had a penchant for complex, racked examinations of his career and his psyche, he was also more than capable of coming up with utterly uncomplicated balls-out pop: the entirely fantastic Kids packs a monster chorus, a guest appearance from Kylie and lyrics that cheerfully played on the media obsession with Williams’s sexuality.

 

2. Strong (1998)

In his heyday, Williams was frequently mocked as an eager-to-please light entertainer, which now seems unfair: here was a huge British star who was charismatic, outspoken, conflicted, his oeuvre packed with curiously meta hits. “This is real because I feel fake,” offers Strong, a song about weakness and self-doubt that sounds ready to take on the world.

 

 

1. Come Undone (2002)

“My main talent is turning trauma into something that looks showbizzy,” Williams told the Guardian in 2016: a perfect summation of Come Undone. Musically, it is a beautifully turned example of a 00s power ballad, gentle piano and acoustic guitar verses surging into immense, air-punch-inducing chorus. Lyrically, it is something else. Come Undone thrashes about, exploring Williams’s success in terms that are alternately defiant – “f*** you all” – and so self-loathing they could have come from the pen of Kurt Cobain: he variously describes himself as “full of shit”, a “corporate suit”, “a whore” and “scum” and informs his audience that “if I stop lying I’d just disappoint you”. A depiction of fame unravelling that is specifically designed to be a hit – it made the Top 5 – it’s an extraordinary song.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/...st-songs-ranked

come undone - I agree, still love the darkness of it

It's a really good top-20, not typical but describes his back catalog much better than all these RockDJ/Angels/Feel.

Personal High five for Sensational.

Edited August 26, 20222 yr by Better Man

 

 

No Regrets (XXV) · Robbie Williams

 

℗ 2022 Robert Williams / Farrell Music Limited

 

Released on: 2022-08-26

 

Composer, Lyricist: Robert Williams

Background Vocal: Chloe Askew

Piano, Composer, Lyricist, Producer: Guy Chambers

Keyboards: Martin Slattery

Guitar: Jim Board

Bass: David Catlin-Birch

Drums: Tom Skinner

Percussion: Oli Savill

Percussion: Edward Scull

Percussion: Jez Wiles

Orchestra: Metropole Orkest

Choir: House Gospel Choir

Conductor, Performance Arranger: Jules Buckley

Mixing Engineer, Producer, Recording Engineer, Vocal Engineer: Richard Flack

Vocal Engineer: Thai Long Ly

Mastering Engineer: Tony Cousins

Unknown: Tristan Noon

Unknown, Performance Arranger: Lizzie Jennings

Engineer: Tom Gelissn

Unknown: Rep Vocal Agency Limited

I would like Sexed Up & BODIES to have been in there

 

 

I agree on SENSATIONAL :heart: , it was a real & unexpected surprise at the time

View this post on Instagram

 

robbiewilliams “It’s the energy that I can sit with and sit in and feel comfortable in” 'No Regrets’ has been newly orchestrated and I love it. Pre-order XXV now through the link in my bio x

Robbie Williams’ 20 greatest songs – ranked!

 

As Williams releases XXV, an orchestral reworking of his greatest hits, we revisit the original songs in the versions you actually want to hear

 

by Alexis Petridis

20. Sensational (2016)

Williams is a far better lyricist than he has been given credit for. Tucked away on The Heavy Entertainment Show, Sensational is a witty, incisive skewering of the occasionally fraught relationship between artist and audience: “I love you ’cause you love me, and I wish that you could always stay. Now go away.”

 

19. Candy (2012)

Most of Williams’s oeuvre has improved with age – the quality of his big hits is easier to appreciate now that they are not omnipresent – but Candy, co-written with Gary Barlow, remains a guilty pleasure: it is almost wilfully cheesy and maddeningly catchy. As a piece of unrepentant bubblegum pop, it ticks every box.

 

18. Tripping (2005)

Tripping looks awful on paper: the lyrics include a quote commonly misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi, the sound is reggae-influenced – or at least reggae by way of the early 80s Clash. It is melodically subtle and downbeat – at least by Williams single standards – but curiously it works.

17. Motherf***er (2016)

Long before mental health became a hot topic in pop music, Williams was laying bare his struggles in song. Motherf***er is the most startling of the lot: addressed to his children, it details generations of illness they might inherit: “I’d like to sing a song that says that you’ll be fine, but … I’d be lying.”

 

16. Morning Sun (2009)

Williams subsequently took to deriding the Trevor Horn-produced Reality Killed the Video Star as “half-arsed” and dubbing it Let Me Underwhelm You, but its opening track is great. Lovely melody, grandiose orchestration, lyrics that – typically – fret about reviews and star ratings and Williams’ own ambition: “All I wanted was the world.”

 

15. Let Love Be Your Energy (2000)

An infinitely more convincing take on Beatle-influenced alt-rock than the pallid Oasis-isms of 1997’s Old Before I Die and Lazy Days, Let Love Be Your Energy barrels confidently out of the speakers, a killer song atop wall of distorted guitars, its arrangement decorated with nods to I Am the Walrus and Penny Lane.

 

14. She’s Madonna (2006)

It would be lovely to retrospectively claim that Rudebox – the album that ended Williams’ imperial phase at a stroke – is a lost left-field pop masterpiece, but it still sounds confused and patchy: the product of an artist who wants to do something different but hasn’t worked out what. Still, the good bits are great, not least this witty, Kraftwerk-y Pet Shop Boys collaboration.

 

13. Go Gentle (2013)

Amid the camp jokes and Great American Songbook standards on Swings Both Ways lurked Go Gentle, a beautifully understated paean to his daughter, audibly influenced not by the swing era, but the sound of grownup, late-60s LA pop – Harry Nilsson, Jimmy Webb-era Glen Campbell.

 

12. Rock DJ (2000)

You got the feeling that Williams, a fan of Ian Dury, saw Rock DJ as his tribute to the Blockheads’ disco-influenced hits: here, the backing comes from Barry White’s mid-tempo It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me, while the rhythm of lyrics is audibly inspired by the Blockheads’ Reasons to Be Cheerful (Part 3).

11. Feel (2002)

The sound of a man on top of the world – the accompanying Escapology album went platinum in more than 14 countries – protesting “I’m not sure I understand the role that I’ve been given”, the resolutely downcast lyrics rubbing against the tune’s soaring, orchestra-assisted uplift.

 

10. She’s the One (1998)

“He nicked my pig and killed it, but he gave me enough bacon to live off for four years,” said World Party’s Karl Wallinger after Williams covered his 1997 album track. It’s a great song, but Williams’s less fragile, less Beatles-y take turned it into the kind of single that goes platinum.

 

9. Let Me Entertain You (1997)

Long established as Williams’s set-opening theme song, it is easy to overlook the fact that Let Me Entertain You’s lyrics aren’t about the singer’s needy desire for an audience: they are a genuinely witty drawing of a man desperately trying to talk someone into bed. Bizarre but true fact: it began life as, of all things, a drum’n’bass track.

 

8. No Regrets (1998)

Williams spent his early solo career spitting bile at his former Take That bandmates in interviews, but while his musical summation of their split has the odd barbed line, its overall tone is not bitter so much as crestfallen and, well, regretful: it sounds like a sigh, haunted by what might have been.

 

7. Lovelight (2006)

A highlight amid the mess of Rudebox, the Mark Ronson-produced Lovelight is not just a fantastic song, but a weirdly prescient one. Sixteen years on, its falsetto-vocal and blend of Daft Punk electronics with super-smooth yacht-rock-y disco sounds very now: frankly, if Harry Styles released it tomorrow, we would never hear the end of it.

6. Supreme (2000)

Prime evidence for how good the Robbie Williams/Guy Chambers songwriting team was at its best, Supreme has a gorgeous chanson-inspired melody; the way it teases its passing similarity to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive in the lyrics before finally letting rip with a string sample from the 1979 hit is inspired.

 

5. Angels (1997)

Angels was so ubiquitous for so long that it is almost impossible for anyone of a certain age to listen to it objectively: throughout the late 90s and 00s, it wasn’t so much a song as an unavoidable fact of daily life. Most pop songwriters would kill to come up with something with such impact and longevity.

4. Advertising Space (2005)

Intensive Care, Williams’s first album without Chambers, is sorely underrated. Co-written by 80s pop star turned cult folk-rocker Stephen Duffy, Advertising Space is a ballad as good as anything the singer ever recorded: an emotive, epic meditation on the death of Elvis and the strained relationship between art and commerce.

3. Kids (2000)

If Williams had a penchant for complex, racked examinations of his career and his psyche, he was also more than capable of coming up with utterly uncomplicated balls-out pop: the entirely fantastic Kids packs a monster chorus, a guest appearance from Kylie and lyrics that cheerfully played on the media obsession with Williams’s sexuality.

 

2. Strong (1998)

In his heyday, Williams was frequently mocked as an eager-to-please light entertainer, which now seems unfair: here was a huge British star who was charismatic, outspoken, conflicted, his oeuvre packed with curiously meta hits. “This is real because I feel fake,” offers Strong, a song about weakness and self-doubt that sounds ready to take on the world.

1. Come Undone (2002)

“My main talent is turning trauma into something that looks showbizzy,” Williams told the Guardian in 2016: a perfect summation of Come Undone. Musically, it is a beautifully turned example of a 00s power ballad, gentle piano and acoustic guitar verses surging into immense, air-punch-inducing chorus. Lyrically, it is something else. Come Undone thrashes about, exploring Williams’s success in terms that are alternately defiant – “f*** you all” – and so self-loathing they could have come from the pen of Kurt Cobain: he variously describes himself as “full of shit”, a “corporate suit”, “a whore” and “scum” and informs his audience that “if I stop lying I’d just disappoint you”. A depiction of fame unravelling that is specifically designed to be a hit – it made the Top 5 – it’s an extraordinary song.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/...st-songs-ranked

 

 

Love this =Alex Petridis has always been a massive RW fan and given him great reviews.

 

I love Go Gentle -it resonates with me for my family so to hear it compared to Jimmy Webb era Glen Campbell -one of my very favourite songwriters -means a lot :heart:

 

Love this =Alex Petridis has always been a massive RW fan and given him great reviews.

 

I love Go Gentle -it resonates with me for my family so to hear it compared to Jimmy Webb era Glen Campbell -one of my very favourite songwriters -means a lot :heart:

 

 

That's the essence of good song-writing Laura, it touches your hear in a special way :wub:

@1564303593297121280

@1564303593297121280

 

I wonder how it's doing on pre -orders?

@1565345376646750209

Robbie Williams: ‘I was a fully-blown, self-medicating addict. It wasn’t a lot of fun’

The pop star reflects on 25 years as a solo artist ahead of the release of a new orchestrated Greatest Hits collection

 

 

If Robbie Williams could sum up the year that he left Take That in one word, it would be “intoxicated”. “Intoxicated,” he repeats, nodding his head. “I was a fully-fledged, fully-blown, self-medicating addict. So unfortunately, it wasn’t a lot of fun - which is why I’m a sober person right now.” He pauses, recalling the chaotic year that was 1995. “But it wasn’t as heady and as exciting as you might believe in movies and stuff. It was just sad and depressing and tiring, and y’know… the heart ached.” He frowns. “And I was lost.”

 

Thirty-two years is a long time in showbusiness and Williams - who joined Take That when he was 16 - has felt every one of them. It’s close to midnight and the now 48 year old is on a Zoom call from Ibiza, where he is holidaying with his family - wife Ayda Field, and kids Teddy (9), Charlie (7), Coco (4) and Beau (2) - and some friends.

 

I was looking for a tribe, and looking for a career, and I was looking for friends in all the wrong places

 

The biggest pop star of his generation looks relaxed, healthy and content; hair undeniably greying, but a long way from the “intoxicated” state of mind and body that he felt before he would eventually kick off his solo career proper in 1997. Now, the 25th anniversary of Williams as a solo artist is being marked by the release of a XXV, a new collection of his biggest hits that have been rearranged for orchestration by Dutch pop and jazz outfit, the Metropole Orchestra.

 

Williams has certainly squeezed a lot of living into the past 25 years. And looking back now, he can perhaps see more clearly where he may have gone wrong. When he refers to feeling lost, and says, “I was looking for a tribe, and looking for a career, and I was looking for friends in all the wrong places”, you can’t help but recall that infamous Glastonbury 1995 photograph of him, bleached blonde hair, clearly inebriated, with his arm draped around Oasis’s Liam Gallagher. Now, he says, he has finally found a sense of contentment. At what point did it arrive?

 

“I guess a couple of years ago,” he shrugs, half a grin on his lips. “Genuinely. It’s just been seat-of-your-pants kind of stuff, day in, day out and album to album. It was great finding Guy Chambers and being in a band called ‘Robbie Williams’, and we would write for that band. And I suppose getting your foot through the door and your feet under the table… I dunno.” He falters momentarily. “It just moved too fast for me to understand what it was. And now, as a 48 year old, I would say that my tribe is my family: my wife and my four kids, and my nearest and dearest. There is a purpose now. I do a job, and daddy goes to work, and it all makes sense now.”

Robbie Williams: 'There is a purpose now. I do a job, and daddy goes to work, and it all makes sense now.' Photograph: Sony Music Ireland

 

Looking back on his musical output - 12 studio albums including a Christmas record and two swing-themed albums, several Greatest Hits and Best Of collections, a live album and more - he has mixed feelings. Hindsight, experience and perhaps a small dose of wisdom has given him a new perspective on his back catalogue.

 

“I’m always three steps ahead of where I am, so I never really look back,” he shrugs. “I know this [new] album causes me to reflect on what has happened - but having heard them with the orchestral arrangements, I think I was closer to where I wanted to be than I actually thought. I’ve never been happy with anything I’ve ever done; I always thought that I would find it in the next album. And the minute that it goes out there and is released to the world, it becomes something other than the thing that I loved when it was just mine. But as it happens,” he concludes, “I understand that about myself now. And I’m looking forward to all the other projects that I’ve got coming down the pipeline.”

 

Williams has always enjoyed surprising people. For a mainstream pop artist, his career has taken several unexpected swerves, from the “Pop God” era to “swing revival” artist long before the world had suffered at Michael Bublé’s hands. He has collaborated with a varied list of names: Rufus Wainwright, John Grant, Pet Shop Boys, Dizzee Rascal, Avicii and country star Brad Paisley among them, and like anyone in the game for so long, has traversed both peaks and troughs of fame and fortune.

 

“I’ve done the archetypal thing that people do when that huge success wanders away from you: you spend a couple of albums going ‘s**t, what was it that I did?’ and then you try to do what you did erroneously,” he admits. “I’ve always tried to live outside being predictable. And unfortunately, things that I’ve released - or at least a couple of things - have been more predictable than I would have liked them to be. Now I’m going back to that place where I just wanna do my own thing and see what happens.”

 

My career couldn’t happen in 2022; it had to happen in 1997, when we were different people, thinking in a different way, behaving in a different manner

 

Although he won’t be drawn on what songs may fall into that “predictable” category, it’s safe to say that he enjoys singing some songs more than others these days.

 

“Well, it depends how much life that I’ve got in my bones,” he says. “You can always do a ballad or a mid-tempo song, but when you have to do Let Me Entertain You and Hot Fudge and Kids, and all of those things - when you’re up for it and the endorphins are kicking in, they’re magic. But when you’re not, you’re like, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, I feel so f**king middle-aged’.”

 

Some of those biggest hits were co-written by Guy Chambers, Williams’s most successful collaborator. The pair famously fell out in the early noughties, but later reconciled and Chambers had a hand in the new arrangements on XXV’s tracklist. “I think it was just a combination of luck, sliding door moments and riding the crest of a wave in the perfect opportunity,” he says, of their long-running partnership. “My career couldn’t happen in 2022; it had to happen in 1997, when we were different people, thinking in a different way, behaving in a different manner. And times were wilder. I’m glad that we lived through the last period when we were kings and queens; it was fun, and it was huge, and it was massive, and it wasn’t dispensable, and it was provocative, and it was controversial, and it was a heady mix of dysfunction and eccentricity. And it was the last time that the charts were like that.” He shakes his head. “I got to close the door.”

 

A sense of “purpose” has kept him in the game, he says, despite that wildness and sense of abandon being dimmed with the music industry’s colossal changes over the years. “I’m constantly in search of the perfect pop record,” he agrees. “I did experience taking three years off and it was the sh**test time ever. My brain turned into Swiss cheese and I was lethargic, and I understood why, when people retire, they die. I need purpose - and without purpose, left to my own devices, not very good things happen. So I just keep going. I keep trucking.”

 

One thought that the sumptuously-arranged tracklist of XXV does elicit is the fact that Williams - despite arguably having both the perfect profile and the requisite swagger for it - has never sung a Bond theme. The new orchestral arrangements of No Regrets and Millennium are particularly Bond-esque.

 

“Obviously, nobody would turn down a Bond theme, and the version of No Regrets on this album has got Bond written all over it,” he agrees. “But I think that my time in the sun for being linked to doing a Bond theme is probably over. I’m not saying that it’s over forever, because careers have a habit of going up and down. That being said… I’d never turn that offer down, that would be an honour. But is it likely? I doubt it.”

 

Jeez, what can I moan about? I’ve had an unbelievable run

 

 

Regardless, he is “absolutely” certain that he has at least another 25 years left in him as a solo artist, yet is similarly enthused by the idea of rejoining his Take That bandmates for another round at some point in the future, having spoken to Gary Barlow and Mark Owen at the beginning of the summer.

“There’s no plans on the horizon, but plans change very quickly,” he says. “And I love writing with the boys, I love creating with the boys and I love being on stage with the boys. It feels good, and it’s just good for the soul. So I reckon that will be happening; when that is, I don’t know.”

 

Looking back on his career at such a significant milestone might have left him feeling melancholic at any other time in his life, but not now. The Robbie Williams of 2022 - the one enjoying a holiday in a luxury Ibizan villa with his wife, children and friends around him - might seem like a stranger to the Robbie of 1997. But today, he agrees, life is good.

 

That said, there are a few things he would have done differently over the years.

 

“I wouldn’t have released Rudebox as the first single off [the album] Rudebox,” he says, only half-joking. “Apart from that, I mean… I don’t look and go, ‘Woe is me, I should’ve done this’. Yeah, there are a few songs that I wish I’d released instead of different songs, because it would’ve made my stage set much better, going forward. That being said… Jeez, what can I moan about? I’ve had an unbelievable run. My daughter often says, ‘Daddy, that’s not fair! Life isn’t fair!’ And I always say to her, ‘If life was fair, I wouldn’t have the career that I’ve had’. So,” he says, allowing himself a smile as he raises an imaginary glass, “here’s to life not being fair.”

 

XXV is released on September 9th. Robbie Williams plays the 3Arena on October 29th, 30th and November 1st

 

 

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/20...-things-happen/

This is just what I like to hear

 

 

“I’ve always tried to live outside being predictable. And unfortunately, things that I’ve released - or at least a couple of things - have been more predictable than I would have liked them to be. Now I’m going back to that place where I just wanna do my own thing and see what happens.”

Great interview.

Great interview.

 

 

I agree, best in a while :)