His best song ('Come Undone') is way too low.

Poor brave She's Madonna :( one of his best

 

:cry:

 

For what was a mess of an album, that really did have two of his finest singles on it!

 

Echoing the 'She's Madonna' love. Deserved to be a top 10 at the very least for him :(

I think at the time the label was a bit "cocky" about Feel and assumed it was gonna be #1 even if released after the album

the trick had worked the previous year with Something Stupid but didn't work this time

if Feel had been released prior to the album sure it would have been #1

If only 'Feel' did make #1. It's my favourite of his!

If only 'Feel' did make #1. It's my favourite of his!

Same here!

Feel does sound like a No.1 single for sure, quite unusual for the lead single to be released after the album but I guess it certainly will have helped to drive sales to that, even if he did miss out on a potential No.1 hit.

 

The week he chose to release it was the same week Eminem put out Lose Yourself and I'm not sure he would have won that battle either way (The Cheeky Girls also debuted in front :lol:), if he'd put it out shortly before the album he'd have run into DJ Sammy's Heaven, Westlife's Unbreakable or Christina's Dirrty, I'm not sure what the sales for those were but I'm sure he'd have got a No.2 peak at least.

Christina's Dirrty had the weakest #1 sales of those three (even on its first week) - her second week at #1 (which is also the same week he released Escapology) would have been the best opportunity for it!

Today I learned that Robbie album was released without a lead single being out first, seems like an unusual strategy for that era! (Did it still get airplay before the album came out?)

I have no memory of that either, I don't know why I don't remember it happening as it would definitely have been a very unusual strategy for that era.

Today I learned that Robbie album was released without a lead single being out first, seems like an unusual strategy for that era! (Did it still get airplay before the album came out?)

 

As it was only a couple of weeks later it definitely would have been on the Radio 1 playlist when the album was released, probably getting heavy spins as they couldn't get enough of him back then.

 

Me and My monkey B-)

 

Love this song - It's brilliant live

 

 

I suppose this topic would be enough for posting this OCC update on Albums too.

Actually they could give more exact figures than this x.x ones... Maybe they will give more detailed sales on Friday.

 

https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/r...evealed__37385/

 

15 September 2022

Robbie Williams' Official biggest albums in the UK revealed

 

5. Life Thru A Lens

Released: 1997

Official Albums Chart peak: Number 1

Total UK chart units: 2.1 million

Debut albums can be a pressure cooker, but you'd have been forgiven for forgetting that Robbie ever sweated his first album since leaving Take That.

 

Indeed, Life Thru A Lens' focus on a Brit-pop sound is a curveball most weren't certainly expecting, but then again, who's going to argue against Angels?

 

4. Sing When You're Winning

Released: 2000

Official Albums Chart peak: Number 1

Total UK chart units: 2.2 million

Robbie's third album came to fruition after he tried (and famously failed) to crack America in 1999. Still, although Stateside superstardom had evaded him, he re-grouped with frequent collaborators Guy Chambers and Steve Power to re-assert his dominance back home.

 

And re-assert he did. Sing When You're Winning contained five UK Top 10 singles; including Number 1 singles Rock DJ and Eternity (which wasn't originally included on the tracklist) and his high-throttle duet with Kylie Minogue, Kids.

 

3. Swing When You're Winning

Released: 2001

Official Albums Chart peak: Number 1

Total UK chart units: 2.4 million

What do you do when you're at the very apex of your solo career and the undisputed biggest pop star in the country? Release an album of jazz covers, obviously.

 

One of the biggest swings (sorry) of Robbie's career, his fourth album contained another Number 1 single in the form of Somethin' Stupid with Nicole Kidman and proved to be so successful that he would revisit the form with a sequel record, Swings Both Ways, in 2013. To date in 2022, Swing When You're Winning is Robbie's third biggest-seller here, but his most digitally downloaded album overall (over 94,000 units).

 

2. Greatest Hits

Released: 2004

Official Albums Chart peak: Number 1

Total UK chart units: 2.5 million

Coming from a time when greatest hits collections were big, big business, Robbie's first chance to reflect on the first phase of his solo career was a tour-de-force. Containing a Number 1 single (Radio), it may come in second place overall, but it contains the most album streams of any Robbie Williams in the UK.

 

1. I've Been Expecting You

Released: 1998

Official Albums Chart peak: Number 1

Total UK chart units: 2.6 million

There were no signs of difficult second album syndrome on I've Been Expecting You. Not only did the single Millennium finally give Robbie the solo Number 1 single he'd been desperate for, it contains some of the most popular songs of his career, included guaranteed tear-jerker She's The One.

 

Overall, I've Been Expecting You comes out on top as Robbie's most popular album in the UK. It has total chart units registering more than 2.6 million, and is also his most physically-purchased record, with more than 2.5 million physical units sold.

 

Here are some of the singles charts a few weeks before Feel's release. I'm just sharing the Top 4s, with the assumption that Feel likely wouldn't have charted lower than #4 in any week:

 

10/11/02 (2 weeks in advance of Escapology, 4 weeks in advance of Feel)

#1 - 90,000 - Westlife - Unbreakable

#2 - 66,500 - DJ Sammy - Heaven

#3 - 55,000 - Nelly & Kelly Rowland - Dilemma

#4 - 42,000 - Shania Twain - I'm Gonna Getcha Good

 

17/11/02 (1 week in advance of Escapology, 3 weeks in advance of Feel)

#1 - 74,000 - Christina Aguilera feat. Redman - Dirrty

#2 - 39,500 - Nelly & Kelly Rowland - Dilemma

#3 - 35,000 - DJ Sammy - Heaven

#4 - 32,000 - Westlife - Unbreakable

 

24/11/02 (same week as album, 2 weeks in advance of Feel)

#1 - 46,922 - Christina Aguilera feat. Redman - Dirrty

#2 - 45,008 - Will Young - You and I / Don't Let Me Down

#3 - 37,000 - Jennifer Lopez - Jenny from the Block

#4 - 28,000 - Nelly & Kelly Rowland - Dilemma

 

01/12/02 (1 week after album, 1 week in advance of Feel)

#1 - 74,500 - Daniel Bedingfield - If You're Not the One

#2 - 45,500 - Atomic Kitten - The Last Goodbye / Be With You

#3 - 32,000 - Chrsitina Aguilera feat. Redman - Dirrty

#4 - 31,000 - Ronan Keating feat. Lulu - We've Got Tonight

 

08/12/02 (2 weeks after album)

#1 - 70,988 - Eminem - Lose Yourself

#2 - 65,500 - The Cheeky Girls - Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)

#3 - 61,500 - Daniel Bedingfield - If You're Not the One

#4 - 55,000 - Robbie Williams - Feel

 

~~~~

 

As mentioned by Coi, it looks like the two weeks that Christina Aguilera spent at #1 could have been Feel's best opportunity to be #1 itself!

 

Assuming that Feel would have attracted more than 55,000 sales if it came in advance of the album... could it have done more than Christina's 74,000? Who knows!

 

However the week after, the week Escapology debuted at #1, Christina sold less than 47k for #1. Considering that Feel was strong enough to be able to sell 55,000 copies two weeks after the album came out, it suggests it would have at least sold 55k or even more in Christina's second week at #1. If this had happened, it would have been quite a feat for both Robbie's album and single to debut at #1 in the same week.

 

It would be interesting to know why his label decided to go with the tactic of releasing the single so late. I mean, the most apparent reason would be to steer people into buying the album in their droves, and that certainly seemed to work - but I wonder if most of the people who bought the album would have done so anyway, even if Feel had been available already? I feel like it may not have been overly necessary for the label to sacrifice Feel's chart potential.

 

 

I just looked at the radio airplay chart, and interestingly 'Feel' only made its debut at #50 on Sunday 27th October. Considering Escapology came out on Monday 18th November - 3 weeks later - that was quite late for the single to begin its airplay. I would say it was more usual for a single (if it was the single directly preceding an album) to have 6 weeks of build up before the single's release and 8 weeks before the album. Now I'm wondering why they were quite late in starting this album campaign? In the end they did give Feel a typical 6 weeks of radio build up before releasing it physically - it was just rather unusual that the album came out beforehand.

 

Feel's airplay chart run in 2002:

 

27/10/02 - #50

03/11/02 - #27

10/11/02 - #07

17/11/02 - #02 (The day before the album's release)

24/11/02 - #03 (Escapology enters at #1 in the albums chart)

01/12/02 - #03 (The day before the single's release)

08/12/02 - #01 (Feel enters at #4 in the singles chart)

15/12/02 - #01

22/12/02 - #01

29/12/02 - #01

 

Feel spent two more weeks as the airplay #1 in the first two weeks of January 2003. The album was still going strong at this point, but Feel had fallen out of the singles chart Top 10.

It's pretty extraordinary how many 2m+ selling albums he managed! It was no mean feat to achieve that level of consistency.

 

From my point of view, Robbie hasn't seemed overly relevant for quite a while now... though clearly still popular to the extent of managing #1 albums in today's market - but his glory days feel pretty far behind him now. Honestly I'd kind of forgotten just how massive he was for such a long time.

Robbie last felt huge to me in 2004, the Greatest Hits era. His really quite long imperial phase slipped a little for the first time with Intensive Care but very definitely ended with Rudebox and he never really got back to that previous level, even if the next few albums did still have impressive sales and produced big hits - even a No.1 with Candy in 2012 - he never again felt at that untouchable level of 1998-2004.

 

Then again, I think the Take That reunion did give him a few more years near the top level of his solo career that might not have happened, that was a huge deal and his remaining star power combined with their success at the time made something very special indeed, Progress was such a great era for all involved, musically and commercially.

 

Nice to see he’s still ticking along with No.1 albums though 30 years after Take That started having hits.

I'd say he was still legitimately huge up until the 'Bodies'/'You Know Me' era, but just not quite as stratospheric as the first half of the decade. 'Candy' really felt like an unexpected comeback of sorts.

I would definitely still include 2005's Intensive Care era in that, Tripping was a much bigger hit than his 2004 tracks (even though it didn't reach #1 like Radio did) and the album did pretty well too! Would agree that Rudebox killed that momentum pretty quickly though :lol:

Certainly Intensive Care did still sell very well, was it also over 1.5m? But to me it didn't feel the hype around it/him was quite at the same insanely high level as everything that had come before, even if Tripping did have a very decent chart run and peak. He still had higher hype than most stars would ever get of course but to me he felt ever so slightly less untouchable than before, I'd say in terms of a modern day comparison he was at the same level of Ed's current era, when all the others had been at an x/Divide style level.

 

Rudebox of course completely killed the momentum, but I will always respect him for doing that and not playing it safe. The lead single wasn't my thing but it has its fans, and there were some good songs on the album. It's so interesting to think what might have happened if he'd continued putting out big stadium pop in 2006 instead of that, I guess the commercial drop in fortune would have continued anyway but not to the same extent.

Certainly Intensive Care did still sell very well, was it also over 1.5m? But to me it didn't feel the hype around it/him was quite at the same insanely high level as everything that had come before, even if Tripping did have a very decent chart run and peak. He still had higher hype than most stars would ever get of course but to me he felt ever so slightly less untouchable than before, I'd say in terms of a modern day comparison he was at the same level of Ed's current era, when all the others had been at an x/Divide style level.

It was over 1.5m yes! If we're considering his 2005 level as not being high enough then I don't think the GH era in 2004 could be included either. Of course his GH album did well as it had all of his massive hits from the previous years but as far as the singles are concerned Tripping did better than Radio and Advertising Space did better than Misunderstood!