this honesty is when I like him most

On 23/01/2026 at 22:49, nirvanamusic said:

The charts elsewhere represent his rash decision to release early. In the UK and Germany it wouldn't be an issue but indeed elsewhere it has split sales and placings.

Westlife have just changed their Greatest Hits date from 13th Feb to 8th May due to scheduling conflict. Do we know who they are trying to avoid? It seems like all the older artists are at it now!

Genuine question: If an older artist doesn't get a number 1 or top 10 album are they more likely to be dropped? Is that the fear?

I doubt Westlife are trying to avoid anyone by postponing the album for 3 months.. Apparently its a scheduling issue or something else... They had a big seller album in 2021 and didnt even try avoiding Adele, released one week later and missed another deserved No.1

5 hours ago, elisabeth1974 said:

this honesty is when I like him most

agree Elisabeth -he's always been authentic, and that is one of the things I like best about him.

Even if he's not the read the reviews -I'm glad he knows how well it's been received. ❤️

Down to 45 today which i know is a big enough fall but i was expecting worse so he should manage to stay top 75.

Has he anything lined up that might help this week?

Edited January 27Jan 27 by Laura130262

Good news that Germany still supports him. Well done Rob ❤️

On 26/01/2026 at 00:06, Laura130262 said:

Even if he's not the read the reviews -I'm glad he knows how well it's been received. ❤️

Of course he needs to read them . It's a great album .I am sure Karl & the gang will tell him all about them whether he likes it or not . .

5 hours ago, Laura130262 said:

Good news that Germany still supports him. Well done Rob ❤️

That is brilliant news , Robbie will be very happy . I know the album has dropped this week in the UK which I was expecting tbh . I am interested to see what happens the week of FEB 6th or the following week , I found the whole release thing very confusing . I take it that some pre=-orders are not been shipped until that date or am I reading it wrong !!

Robbie Williams and the allure of homoerotic pop

The boy-on-boy backbeat goes right to the start of rock ’n’ roll

• 27 January 2026, 5:01am

• From Spectator Life

[Getty]

When I heard that Robbie Williams had written a song called ‘Morrissey’, I didn’t know whether to be delighted or irate. It’s no secret that I idolise Moz, and the idea of a somewhat seedy showman attempting glory by association made my hackles rise somewhat. 

But on the other hand, Williams has co-written several songs which have caused my toes to tap over the years and has a history of acting gay when it suits him. (Indeed, Take That’s appeal might be crudely summed up as four lads who looked like rent boys and their concerned social worker, Gary Barlow.)

Then there was the ‘Shame’ video of 2010 by Robbie and Gary, in which the two principals start by exchanging copious meaningful glances in a shopping mall. Then we cut to a dancehall where the two men are each dancing with women, but still have eyes only for each other. Then they’re necking shots and fessing up: ‘So I got busy throwing everybody underneath the bus / And with your poster 30 foot high at the back of Toys R Us / I wrote a letter in my mind / But the words were so unkind / I must have meant them at the time / Is this the sound of sweet surrender?’ Then they’re stripping off and have their arms around each other! It was little surprise that the song came from an album called Swings Both Ways. 

But I’m always keen on a bit of boy-on-boy (or rather, sexy-uncle-on-sexy-uncle, considering their ages and appearance) action, so the idea that Robbie had written a song about the ultimate sexy uncle of pop wet my whistle somewhat. After all, the backbeat of homoeroticism goes all the way back to the start of rock ’n’ roll, with Little Richard ceaselessly proclaiming how pretty he was. He may have been singing about girls named Daisy and Sue, but it’s very obvious that he got the hots from himself. 

The English pop of the 1960s seemed a very different beast indeed to the primal rock of America. But anyone who watches early footage of the Beatles in big venues just after they’d made it – especially in America – will notice that the girls in the audience get especially overheated when Paul and George close their eyes, put their heads close together and make an ‘OOO!’ sound. 

The Rolling Stones liked to tart themselves up with satin, tat and a whole lot of slap. Mick Jagger in particular appeared to enjoy prancing around like a little girl getting overexcited at her own sixth birthday party. Ray Davies of the Kinks was very ‘knowing’ in a way that could only be gay. But the real smorgasbord of swoosh was waiting around the corner in the 1970s.

Where to start? You couldn’t watch Top of the Pops in the 1970s without your dad swearing and leaving the room. It must have kicked off with that time in 1972 when David Bowie casually draped his arm over guitarist Mick Ronson’s shoulder while singing ‘Starman’. By the reaction of excitable teens and fuming parents alike, you’d think they’d been tearing each other’s clothes off on national TV. 

From then on, they were all at it. The unfortunate ones like Elton John and Roy Wood of Wizzard knew they had little chance of passing as pretty boys but piled on the make-up and platform boots anyway. Then you had the wolves in flamingos’ clothing – Bryan Ferry, Marc Bolan and probably David Bowie himself after an early period of ‘experimentation’ – who were ferociously heterosexual but found it great fun to ponce around blind with mascara and heavy-headed with hairspray. And never forget Him From Sweet: Steve Priest, the campest man on TotP, which is saying something.

You couldn’t watch Top of the Pops in the 1970s without your dad swearing and leaving the room

Were our dads too masculine? Did we want men who looked like they couldn’t fight and win a war? ‘It’s true that my dad refused to believe that “shampoo for men” existed and he used a bar of soap on his head all of his life,’ says the writer Caraline Brown – but ‘what absolute idiots we were in our adolescent desires. Now we’ve got a bunch of middle-aged children who’d rather play video games all day than fight a war, and are we pleased with them? Not one little bit, I’d venture.’

Men learned the lesson that girls like boys who seemed gay. It could be seen all the way up to Brett Anderson of Suede, who memorably called himself ‘a bisexual man who never had a homosexual experience’. The concept of ‘shipping’ – online fan fiction which forces famous people, real or imagined, into homosexual romances – has been around for some time, running the gamut from Captain Kirk and Mr Spock to Harry Styles and his One Direction bandmates. 

Indeed, Styles is the latest of the long line of English pop stars who pretends to be gay because it drives girls wild. The audience for his film My Policeman was mostly young women who could finally see him being with a man in a way they could previously have only dreamt of. 

So back to the Morrissey song. Pathetic types like Martin Robinson have tried to sway it their way as ‘a hilariously sarcastic diss song which attempts to get under the skin of the former Smiths singer… Williams plays the part of a stalker who believes that the grumpy Mozza with his “divisive” views just needs a big hug: “Come here, let me hold you, for the rest of your life / Morrissey, it’s just you and me.” You can practically see Morrissey turning puce at the very thought.’

But Morrissey has a long history of embracing homoerotica: all those beautiful boys on the record sleeves, all those sweet and tender hooligans in the songs. And Williams, like Morrissey, is a big supporter of Israel, so not averse to being a bit ‘divisive’ (aka independent) himself. He had a show cancelled in Turkey for being a ‘Zionist’.

I’d wager that the song is more of a kiss than a diss – and that his Mozness is secretly tickled, not irked. After all, it’s just the latest wink and nudge in the boy-on-boy backbeat of pop.

Robbie Williams and the allure of homoerotic pop

Edited January 27Jan 27 by Sydney11

Some interesting facts & figures on BBC Radio 4 . Have a listen from 34 mins onwards. Link at end of this page .

SamiraAhmedUK

·

12h

Don your finest black polo neck for Richard Linklater. He's talking Nouvelle Vague live on

@BBCFrontRow

Plus

@willpageauthor

on Robbie Williams beating the Beatles' record on no 1 albums.

or: https://bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002qj0x

( Will Page is a British economist, author, podcaster and DJ. He is the former Chief Economist at streaming music service Spotify,^[1] a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts,^[2] and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and the Edinburgh Futures Institute. )

Robbie Williams has beaten the Beatles' record for the most UK album chart number ones - we ask former Spotify exec Will Page how he's done it.

Listen below -

BBC Audio | Front Row | Richard Linklater on Nouvelle Vague

Edited January 27Jan 27 by Sydney11

6 hours ago, Laura130262 said:

He will be thrilled with this ...

STOP GETTING MORRISSEY WRONG (Robbie Williams) Morrissey isn’t a meme. He isn’t a headline. And he definitely isn’t whatever pop culture keeps flattening him into. This song pushes back — at lazy takes, easy villains, and the noise around Morrissey, with a side-eye at Robbie Williams and the art of saying something loud without saying much at all. Not a defence. Not a takedown. Just a correction

Source https://www.youtube.com/@GatewayJones-p3g

A nice review from the Netherlands

What makes BRITPOP Robbie Williams his most personal album in years?

27 January 2026, 08:27 by Rob de Greeuw

Robbie Williams' album BRITPOP feels like an unexpected return to his musical roots. Although according to the singer it should have been released in 1995, it is only now the time that he can fully develop his vision. The result is an album in which Robbie makes himself heard in a personal, playful and sometimes vulnerable way. BRITPOP by Robbie Williams also combines rock, Britpop influences and his characteristic humour. Which makes it captivating from the first note and makes you curious about what is to come.

The opening track Rocket immediately sets the tone. It's a powerful song. Partly thanks to the collaboration with Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. That rock background gives the album a raw energy that we don't often hear from him. On the following Spies, Williams audibly deals with personal demons. While his experience with the Great American Songbook subtly resounds through the melodies.

In recent interviews, Robbie Williams emphasized how much he owes to his wife. That theme is clearly reflected in Pretty Face, in which he reflects on stability and support. The end of the song also feels like a subtle nod to Oasis, the standard-bearers of Britpop. He continues that candid tone on All My Life, where he sings: "I've made friends with knowing that I'm strange." It's a line that fits perfectly with an artist who has fully accepted himself.

Humour, self-reflection and musical variation on BRITPOP

Humor and self-reflection are not lacking in BRITPOP by Robbie Williams. Bite Your Tongue opens with the well-known tongue-in-cheek sentence: "I accept your cookies, I'm accepting them all." Williams even dares to rap here, something that only works thanks to his self-confidence. That self-confidence also resonates on Cocky, where he sings: "You get to talk to Jesus / When I get to talk to God."

At the same time, Williams shows his more reflective side on Pretty Face and All My Life. Here he shows vulnerability and acknowledges his idiosyncrasies and mistakes. With this alternation between humor and self-reflection, the album keeps the listener captivated and shows that Robbie Williams still dares to experiment within his own style.

Experiment, resting points and surprising bonus tracks on BRITPOP by Robbie Williams

A resting point on the album is Human, a collaboration with Jesse & Joy, greats in South America. The song breaks through the rocking guitars and gives the album balance. This is followed by Morrissey, a disco-like song in which Williams puts the former Smiths singer on a pedestal. For You may lack some inspiration lyrically, but musically it is reminiscent of Gang Of Four, which makes it still interesting.

Not every experiment at BRITPOP by Robbie Williams works out equally well. On It's OK Until The Drugs Stop Working, the blandness sometimes strikes, something Williams continues on the Deluxe Edition with Selfish Disco. On the other hand, Comment Section is stronger in terms of content, because he tries to fathom the psyche of the online commenter.

The bonus tracks G.E.M.B. and the bouncy 100% Beau are not out of place and let the rock star be heard again. f***ing Amazing is also a highlight, especially because of the honest line: "Somehow you deal with my addictions / Cos in the history of drugs and stuff I win." With a slightly sharper selection, Robbie Williams might have been able to deliver one of his strongest albums ever. Nevertheless, Robbie Williams' BRITPOP undoubtedly deserves a place in the upper echelons of his discography.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

BRITPOP by Robbie Williams: his most personal album

9 hours ago, Sydney11 said:

Some interesting facts & figures on BBC Radio 4 . Have a listen from 34 mins onwards. Link at end of this page .

SamiraAhmedUK

·

12h

Don your finest black polo neck for Richard Linklater. He's talking Nouvelle Vague live on

@BBCFrontRow

Plus

@willpageauthor

on Robbie Williams beating the Beatles' record on no 1 albums.

or: https://bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002qj0x

( Will Page is a British economist, author, podcaster and DJ. He is the former Chief Economist at streaming music service Spotify,^[1] a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts,^[2] and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and the Edinburgh Futures Institute. )

Robbie Williams has beaten the Beatles' record for the most UK album chart number ones - we ask former Spotify exec Will Page how he's done it.

Listen below -

BBC Audio | Front Row | Richard Linklater on Nouvelle Vague

It’s a shame someone so apparently-qualified made so many howling mistakes.

Tony Iommi, famous guitarist - on drums?! 🤦‍♀️

Also: the bulk of his audience does not stream, so that comment about the demographic age range is very limited as it’s obviously about the minority who do.

Plus the ‘Guy Chambers writes for him’ canard.

I feel that if this writer needs the sound of things falling apart she should just turn on her tv & it's right there in your face for all to see. I think she needs to turn over & go back to sleep

Things fall apart. Sometimes, we should let them

Music’s centre—that is, Robbie Williams—is trying to hold. I’d much rather a diversification of genres, subgenres and sounds

By Laura Barton

There has been a tectonic fragility to the early weeks of 2026, the uneasy sense of an old world shifting. New horror in Syria, Venezuela, Greenland, Iran; ongoing terror in Gaza, Sudan. In the United States, ICE raids and Department of Justice investigations; in the UK, political defections and rising migrant crossings. Amid all this, the potential end of Nato, the upheaval of AI, our warming planet’s point of no return.

Eight years ago, the Irish writer Fintan O’Toole introduced the idea of the Yeats Test as a way to gauge the geopolitical spirits. The premise is simple: “The more quotable Yeats seems to commentators and politicians, the worse things are,” he explained. I cannot have been alone in spending these first few weeks of January reflexively muttering that familiar line: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

In the wake of such geopolitical chaos, it always seems trite to write about the arts, and yet it is fascinating that in our cultural lives we can also see a disintegration. Our habits are now often described as “social yet separate”—watching and listening to different music, television, podcasts, while in the same room as our loved ones. Even alone, we are frequently “second screening”—scrolling our mobile devices while ostensibly watching TV.

In music, we can see this dissolution in an increasing stratification of genres. At the start of the year, the sample library Splice released the findings of a study into the trends and microtrends of musical taste likely to dominate the coming year. It told of the growth of house music—particularly the melodic form of Afro house, demand for which rose 778 per cent last year, amounting to 6.7m downloads. Other forms of dance music are flourishing, too—among them speed garage and hard techno. In hip-hop, there have been expansions into boom bap, rage and trap EDM. Pop, meanwhile, has enjoyed both a resurgence and a period of experimentation, with the growing popularity of hyperpop, bedroom pop and acoustic indie.

“We are at a turning point in music,” the study’s authors claim. “Taste has become so fragmented that mainstream culture is being replaced by highly diversified listening habits and the blurring of musical styles across genres and scenes.”

It’s natural to recoil from this kind of change. And it’s undeniable that the world’s recent re-orderings have been marked by something brutish and rapacious and dark. But culturally, and certainly in terms of music, I’m not convinced that fragmentation is necessarily cause for concern. Indeed, a greater anarchy now seems loosed through the centre’s desperate efforts to still hold.

As our musical tastes splinter, mainstream culture is engaging in desperate land-grabs to shore up the power of both major recording artists and major labels who might fear a not-so-hegemonic future.

In the middle of January, Robbie Williams put out his 13th album, Britpop. It was originally announced last May and slated for release in October, before the prospect of going up against Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl gave Williams and his team the jitters. The album was pushed back to February.

The mid-January release, then, was something of a surprise. But we can see its early arrival as tactical: the singer’s record company, Columbia, laying a safe bet that Williams would knock Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving off the top spot and encounter few other rivals in this quiet release week. The chart victory was crucial. Previously, Williams shared the title of “more number one albums” with the Beatles; Britpop, through a delicate conjuring of digital sales and preorders, pushes him out ahead.

As an album, Britpop is a curious thing. Williams himself has described it as a homage to “a golden age of British music”, and in the context of the original release schedule perhaps that might have made sense—the new songs swept up in the excitement of last year’s Oasis and Pulp live dates.

But in the light of this new year, the concept of the record feels disjointed. Williams, looking backwards to that giddy summer of 30 years ago when he quit Take That and started knocking about with the Gallaghers. Or further back still, in pursuit of a silly chart rivalry with the Beatles.

It speaks of an old world; of somewhere pale and male and stale. As 2026 sets out, I feel, increasingly, that the world I want to live in is a diversified blur; that the centre has held too long. Give me Afro house and bedroom pop, give me boom bap and rage, give me the sound of things falling apart.

Source Things fall apart. Sometimes, we should let them

Edited January 28Jan 28 by Sydney11

Album Review – Britpop by Robbie Williams :

kendalllaceyJanuary 19, 2026alternative music, heavy metal, music, music icons, music reviews,

Welcome back, Mr Williams, we’ve been expecting you. Except we haven’t, Britpop was not due to arrive until next month and then magically I came home on Friday morning and there it was, preening from the streaming service like a little golden retriever, cheeky, playful and oh so loveable. Except of course, like the doggo, some people are allergic to Robbie. I mean I’m so far on the other side that I own everything on CD and a few on vinyl, right from the classic Take That debut to the cocky whiplash genius of The Heavy Entertainment Show. I’m sure there will be a lot of mainstreamers calling this his best album since X, but for me THES was top tier so Britpop is just a continuation of the one of the greatest to ever do it. Don’t get mad, he’s just a f***ing pop star and now, unlike when Life Thru A Lens came out and you couldn’t escape the sound of Angels or Let Me Entertain You on the radio, very few people listen to the radio, so you are unlikely to hear his latest work unless you search it out. But, of course, some people are searching it out, just so they can tell us how much they didn’t want to hear it. My favourite is people smugly Xing ‘Oh he just wants to be Oasis!’. Let me say this slowly for those at the back, the f***ing album is called Britpop and the cover of the record is a shot from when Robbie went to Glastonbury with the Gallaghers. Robbie is right back in the mid nineties, creating the record he wishes he could have made when he left TT in 1995. Unlike that Robbie, he might be a 51 year old family man but that is very different from being ‘mature’, Britpop is a big ball of rock n roll fun, hell it even has metal legends Tony Iommi and Glenn Hughes along for the ride. Oh and Gaz Coombes from Supergrass for more of the Britpop vibe and Gary Barlow. On a song about Morrissey. Which is called ‘Morrissey’ because, of course it is.

The album speeds out the traps like a greyhound (Parklife!) with the three singles Rocket, Spies and Pretty Face. Since release, Pretty Face has become one of my very favourite Robbie songs, it is just so heartfelt and genuine that I could put it on a tape for my new girlfriend, without worrying that the lyrics could be taken any other way, which is a compliment for all the best pop songs. The video had Robbie ‘appearing’ on The Word, which he never did, again, Britpop and that chorus soars like an eagle. Oh and it nods to Elastica with its elongated swagger.

If you want the most Oasisy track, All My Life could have fit on Be Here Now, not a knock I love that record and Robbie goes full Liam with one of the album’s best vocals. If you want to go back further, Cocky channels Noddy Holder and joins that Slade attitude with the gloss and make-up stomp of Blockbuster by The Sweet. “Oh, this is just a rip-off of…”, yeah well done poindexter, I remember when I was having fun with Elastica and Menswear there were those folding their arms and asking if I had heard Wire and the Small Faces. I had, thanks. Human nods back to one of his own, it reminds me of Feel, but now he is calmer and less down on himself, “Don’t worry not everyone leaves” It’s beautifully gen-uinnnnne. The only downside is the horrible middle section where Rob goes to heaven and meets his grandma. Yeah, really. We know he loved her and we got a beautiful look at that relationship in Better Man, but I couldn’t stomach Nan’s Song either and that was on my very favourite RW album. This meant this was the track that took me the longest to click with, but now I love it. I still sneer at that bit though, soz Rob.

“I’m lost, I’m lonely, I’m hurt, I’m abused, I need love, baby, just like you” – with a lyric like this you might think we are back in the dark times, but no this is Morrissey, a song that sounds like a Pet Shop Boys b-side which is a compliment obviously. Rob has probably had his fair share of obsessive fans, so hearing him say “Morrissey is talking to me in code, it’s just you and me and they don’t need to know” has the same feel as Stan, if Eminem owned a lot of Erasure records. Want some more out there references? There are few scenes that got trashed as much as Britpop, but Electroclash is definitely one of them and I almost dropped my cola when I heard You, which is blatantly circling the Peaches classic f*** The Pain Away, which is not a comparison I expected to be making with any artist tbh, perhaps least of all Robert Williams. Luckily I am in that small venn diagram of people who loves both artists and so You was the most instant song here for me.

Then Robbie goes all in on the more epic side of Britpop down the years, It’s Okay Until The Drugs Stop Working is more than a great title, it brings in the orchestra, Suede, The Divine Comedy, McAlmont And Butler’s classic Yes, Tony Christie or Gene Pitney if you wanna go back further. It’s brilliant and is a great send off to a great album. Oh we also get Pocket Rocket after this, of course, where the album goes full circle back to the start, now gentle and serene, but It’s Okay is the real kiss goodbye, Pocket Rocket just makes you wanna hear the real version and thus you press play again and Britpop shines again. On Sunday, when this hits number one, Robbie Williams will be the UK’s number one artist for number one albums EVER. As my buddy Ant said today when I made this proclamation “If. If it hits number one…” I truly believe that Britpop is Robbie at the top of his game and I can’t see anything or anyone stopping this being a glorious victory lap around the charts, back on the top, back in the game, back in time, back to the future, into the history books, but most importantly one of my favourite artists ever just being f***ing great. As he states at the start “What a time to be alive”.

britpop, gary barlow, gaz coombes, morrissey, music, robbie williams, rock, RW, supergrass, the word, writing

Source Album Review – Britpop by Robbie Williams : – Kendall Lacey's Webworld

Edited January 28Jan 28 by Sydney11