OK, it's a week of US release so let's support the Movie on social networks there if we can.

 

Let me say some joke firstly.

It would be funny if there could be this song before / or after the movie screening in USA :)

Come on, it has been in Las Vegas so why not now? :)

 

 

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Some billboards of BM in Los Angeles:

 

 

 

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40:45 - still Robin and still some part of amnesia for US ladies :)

Some giant billboards appeared in LA

 

An American Guide to Robbie Williams

 

Last week, after a Los Angeles screening of the wildly premised biopic Better Man, I saw a number of viewers get out their phones and immediately Google the film’s protagonist. For the past two hours, they’d watched the real-life story of Robbie Williams — a British pop singer who’s sold over 75 million records — acted out by a CGI monkey. Perhaps my fellow moviegoers needed further confirmation that the star of Better Man was, in fact, based on an actual person.

 

Let’s also assume the Googlers were Americans, since, to most Britons like myself, Williams’s career is as culturally ingrained as the rules of football. Born Robert Peter Williams in the unremarkable city of Stoke-on-Trent, one of the best-selling British solo acts of all time first found stardom as a teenager in the ’90s boy band Take That. But Williams, an off-kilter and often out-of-key performer, jarred against the group’s rigidity, and he eventually left in 1995, an event that caused the charity Samaritans to set up a helpline for crestfallen fans.

 

,

Leaving would also set the foundation for the next breakneck chapter of Williams’s career. His debut album, Life Thru a Lens, spawned several supersonic hits, including “Angels,” a track that began closing out everything from school discos to funerals. By the 2000s, Williams had become as fundamental to England as bad teeth and blinky awkwardness. He was, as he stated on his 2002 single “Handsome Man,” the one who put the “Brit” in “celebrity.”

 

Yet despite his status overseas, Williams’s many attempts to break Stateside have repeatedly fallen flat. Whether Better Man, out wide this week, finally pulls it off is an open question. Until then, I, a lonely Brit in L.A., have a sharp desire to teach this country about the Robster and everything that’s made him the patron w*n**r of bighearted buffoonery.

 

His Survival Arc

Williams’s rise is a rare story of meritocracy at work. We love that he grew up in Stoke-on-Trent — a place of working-class pride that Brits can safely exoticize — and how, when he joined Take That, he transcended that upbringing to join London’s latte-drinking elite. We love how forthright Williams has been about his battle with alcoholism and how he resisted it so sharply (he’s been sober for over 20 years now). We love how his songs are all-conquering anthems that turned small life large: “I hope I’m old before I die / Well, tonight I’m gonna live for today,” he sang on “Old Before I Die.” But most of all, we love that there is nothing particularly transcendent or exceptional about Williams. What he may lack in technical exceptionality, he makes up for with a zany and overzealous desire to entertain. He’s an everyman with a semi-theatrical singing voice. By his own admission, he’s cabaret: someone with the vocal talent of a cruise-ship performer who happened to find colossal success. Williams gleefully forces our gaze upon him and his own try-hardness. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the music video for “Rock DJ,” which sees Williams literally peel off his own flesh in order to get the audience’s attention.

 

His Lovable Dickheadedness

Cocky, in-yer-face, and devilishly mischievous, Williams is explicitly committed to the philosophy of just havin’ a bloody good laugh, mate. Seemingly made in a petri dish of cigarette ashes and watered-down lager, his vernacular comes straight from the British pub. He is routinely cheeky. Take, for instance, the time he shouted, “I’m rich beyond my wildest dreams!” at a press conference after his record-breaking £80 million signing with EMI in 2002. His main function is to remind us that nothing — including seriousness itself — should be taken seriously. A few choice examples:

 

Photo Getty Images

 

As often as Williams’s songs are funny, they are also self-flagellating, sad, and insecure. Williams has always sourced his punch lines from a place of pain. His songs make plain what his arrogance, brashness, and vivacious assholery try to conceal: He is a man full of irreconcilable contradictions who longs for emotional simplicity. “I just wanna feel real love / feel the home that I live in,” he sang on “Feel,” which also features one of the all-time greatest confessional lyrics: “I don’t wanna die / But I ain’t keen on living either.”

 

His Confessional Approach,

Williams brought to British music a self-revealing and revelatory confessional mode that is now ubiquitous. While the genre has devolved into safe narratives and pop therapyspeak, there was a real sense of risk and ambivalence to Williams’s lyrics. In one moment, he could be bored and dispassionate; in the next, he’d inflate feelings until they were one breath away from exploding. His songs convey such a rare level of emotional articulacy that they tend to draw some level of admiration — even if reluctantly — from just about every crowd. Kids feel spoken to in a way they’ve never before. Teenagers yearn alongside him. Divorced dads finally feel held.

 

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His Exposing the Realities of Fame

Long before the knowledge of Britney Spears’s conservatorship inspired our broader reckoning with celebrity, Williams was Britain’s infamous anti-fame sage — which, of course, only made him more famous. His songs often cheekily broke the fourth wall, exposing the industry and its bigwigs’ desire to infringe their commercial logic upon his art. “We’ll paint by numbers, ’til something sticks,” he sang alongside Kylie Minogue on “Kids.” While it’s now common for singers to bemoan the dehumanization of the music business, Williams set an early precedent at a time when fame was at its most noxious and uncontested. His commercial peak coincided with an upsurge in celebrity interest and devaluation. While that caused an unprecedented skepticism of fame from the public, as well as a distinct lack of sympathy for anyone who experienced it, Williams’s was one of the few anti-fame voices who broke through. The more famous he became, the more he sang about how much it destroyed him, and the more people actually sat up and listened. “Yeah, I’m a star, but I’ll fade / If you ain’t sticking your knives in me / You will be eventually,” he chided on “Monsoon.” When you become famous, people tend to stop feeling sorry for you. That’s the case for everyone, except Williams. As Better Man lays out, he’s the performing monkey whose pain becomes our entertainment.

 

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/other/an-am...id=BingNewsVerp

Edited January 8Jan 8 by Sydney11

Due the fact we have talks about US market nowadays let's open this thread and use it for both acts - Take That & Robbie.

 

Any thoughts, ideas, news.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

p.s. I will check the old threads more attentively - maybe there has been already something similar, then I will combine them.

I've been reading quite a few threads on it on Reddit.

 

It makes for quite depressing reading :arrr:

 

There is a lot of ignorance regarding him on there but in fairness I get the impression most of the posters are young males, so not exactly his core audience..

They're very scathing.

 

They gleefully post a lot about why the movie will bomb there and the European posters tell them how famous he is elsewhere and to get their heads out their arses. :lol:

 

 

 

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1h...better_man_yet/

I am very cautious about Reddit no matter what subject. Some posts make it also onto the twitter feed of Rob and that is already enough. Anyways, there are so many US superstars I would have never heard off and if Rob's songs are called easy listen cheap pop quite everything America is producing these days and call music come to my mind. (heard some old music lately of Joan Baez and CCR and was sighing despite this was pre to my time either :-) )

You will not change ignorant people's mind with arguments.

I've been reading quite a few threads on it on Reddit.

 

It makes for quite depressing reading :arrr:

 

There is a lot of ignorance regarding him on there but in fairness I get the impression most of the posters are young males, so not exactly his core audience..

They're very scathing.

 

They gleefully post a lot about why the movie will bomb there and the European posters tell them how famous he is elsewhere and to get their heads out their arses. :lol:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1h...better_man_yet/

 

 

Well this is his answer to the "Haters"

 

 

 

 

One thing about Rob is that he continues to o his own thing & is still successful . Why is that people think the US is ‘be all and end all’ . I remember in the Netflix documentary where he was touring the radio stations in the US at the beginning of his career, they did not get him & he did not get them & as he often says he looked like he couldn't be arsed . He never put in real effort in the US so I am not that surprised he made an impact there but still they ask who he is , so let them argue about it. it's all good for Rob.

Edited January 9Jan 9 by Sydney11

The boys did Carpool Karaoke for Comic Relief in 2017 and had a segment where they tried to promote their music in the states:

 

I would be telling a lie if I said that I know a lot about Take That in the early days so I can only go by what I read , i only got to know abot Take That after Rob's Knebworth gig ...

 

 

Why Didn’t Take That Take Over America?

The story of Take That in the U.S. is one of short-circuited momentum and bad timing

 

In the late ’80s, the Manchester-based manager Nigel Martin-Smith saw the success of New Kids On The Block and he had an idea: He wanted to create a British boy band of his own. He brought together 19-year-old singer Gary Barlow, 21-year-old DJ Howard Donald, 19-year-old painter-slash-dancer Jason Orange, 18-year-old football hopeful Mark Owen, and cheeky 16-year-old Robbie Williams to form Take That, a five-member band that would quickly take the U.K. — and the rest of Europe — by storm.

 

The story of Take That in the U.S., however, is one of short-circuited momentum and bad timing. While the group’s 1995 hit “Back For Good” remains a recurrent staple on adult-contemporary radio, cracking America proved to be elusive. At the outset, the divide could be explained away by the separate ways in which pop songs were marketed to audiences in and outside America; the coulda-shoulda-woulda files are filled with tracks that took off on one side of the pond but didn’t, for whatever reason, translate across the Atlantic. But in the case of Take That, other factors quickly took hold.

 

The group’s first album, Take That & Party, came out in 1992, and hit big almost immediately across Europe. The combination of Take That’s magazine-ready personalities drew eyeballs, and Barlow’s crisp songwriting on tracks like “Do What U Like” and “Why Can’t I Wake Up With You” garnered comparisons to formidable pop talents. But U.S. success didn’t click — a remix of “Love Ain’t Here Anymore,” from sophomore LP Everything Changes, geared toward American listeners didn’t connect with radio programmers — even as the band was racking up album sales and BRIT Awards.

 

Pop impresario Clive Davis saw stateside potential in Take That, and his then-label Arista signed the band to a U.S. deal in 1995. By the middle of that year, the group’s third album, Nobody Else, had sold impressively worldwide, and it performed particularly well in Japan and Germany, then the second- and third-biggest markets in the global pop marketplace.

 

The deal initially looked like it would reward Davis’s storied instincts. The strummy, lush “Back For Good,” a testament to Barlow’s pop knack that was the group’s seventh chart-topper in the U.K., steadily accrued airplay on American pop and adult-contemporary stations upon its release. Nobody Else, the band’s third worldwide album and American debut, came out in August 1995 and sold modestly (its current sales total is 288,000, according to Nielsen Music).

 

At the time, Take That was full of the type of boy-band turmoil that will be familiar to fans of Donnie Wahlberg or Zayn Malik. Williams had quit the band before it began pitching itself to American audiences during the chart ascent of “Back For Good,” and the version of Nobody Else that came out in the States was tweaked so that it only had one song that featured Williams on lead vocal duties — “Every Guy,” where he shared the spotight with Barlow. Other songs were swapped out for older tracks that had been proven hits overseas.

 

Despite this, hopes were high. “We listened to the material on [Nobody Else], and it showed us that this group had a great songwriter in Gary Barlow, whose music is in the tradition of Elton John and George Michael,” Davis told Billboard in October 1995. Radio and retail were similarly optimistic, with one record chain’s buyer touting the band’s “solid pop sound that attracts both kids and adults” to Billboard.

 

“Back For Good” finished out 1995 as the No. 62 single on that year’s Hot 100, a chart topped by Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.” In a Top 40 marketplace that was being pushed in different directions by the ascent of alt-leaning acts like Alanis Morissette and the Goo Goo Dolls and the continued dominance of R&B acts like TLC and Brandy. The pure pop sound of Take That found itself in a tough spot a few years before teenyboppers like Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and *N SYNC fully arrived in America. “Never Forget,” the Donald-fronted followup single to “Back,” didn’t chart in the U.S. while going to No. 1 in the U.K., and the band split up after a farewell gig in early 1996.

 

Both Barlow and Williams attempted to make a go at solo careers in the America. Barlow released his first U.S. solo single, a cover of Joe Diffie’s “So Help Me Girl,” in the fall of 1997, and it eventually reached No. 44 on the Hot 100. The 1998 single “Superhero,” which Barlow co-wrote with a then-ascendant Swedish songwriter-producer named Max Martin, only attained Bubbling Under status. A 2000 Billboard piece on the rough commercial road faced by certain British artists when they tried to break the American market quoted Barlow’s then-manager as thinking that his musical chops would sell to American audiences, “especially in the smaller regions,” but that prediction didn’t quite take hold.

 

In 1999 Capitol signed Williams and released The Ego Has Landed, which compiled hits he’d had in Europe; the grandiose “Millennium,” which sampled Nancy Sinatra’s “You Only Live Twice,” peaked at No. 72 on the Hot 100, while his super-ballad “Angels” reached No. 53. (A 2004 cover by Jessica Simpson led to the latter song percolating in the American consciousness enough for it to be covered by season-seven American Idol runner-up David Archuleta; that peaked at No. 89 on the Hot 100.) Williams’s gross-out video for “Rock DJ,” a pulsing track off his 2000 album Sing When You’re Winning, was icky enough to garner curiosity airplay from MTV, although it only gained critical mass on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart.

 

Take That reformed without Williams in 2006. In 2010 the band tried to conquer the U.S. once more, buoyed by the flamboyant singer’s return and an album, Progress, that sold 235,000 copies during its first day available in U.K. stores — an astonishing number for that market. But a proposed tour with diva deluxe Kylie Minogue, a former collaborator of Williams’s, fell through, and the band went on hiatus in 2011.

 

Take That is still a going concern; now down to Barlow, Donald, and Owen, the group has spent chunks of 2015 touring Europe, a run that included a nine-night stay at the O2 in London last month. Barlow’s storied songwriting ability has a Broadway showcase via Finding Neverland, the Peter Pan origin story musical for which he wrote the music. Williams is currently crisscrossing the globe on a tour named after his 1998 hit “Let Me Entertain You,” although the global remit of dates has avoided the States so far. And the band’s small but devoted fanbase on this side of the pond congregates on Facebook and on Twitter. But the tale of their near-stardom in the U.S. is one that begs for them to be reconsidered by American listeners, even as a glimpse into the pop gems somehow missed by the vast American pop landscape during their first go-round.

 

https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/take-th...d-week-6634332/

Edited January 9Jan 9 by Sydney11

I would love to see Rob do Vegas again, this time in The Sphere which is an amazing venue , he would sell out a series of gigs no problem & off the back of the Better Man movie/[promo he will have picked up many new US fabs along the way , this opinion is backed up by the many posts I have seen on Twitter where posters have said they have gone & listened to his songs after seeing the movie , It's all good ....

There was also talk of Take That doing Vegas so maybe that will happen.

 

I am not so sure you would see either Rob or TT doing an actual tour of the US , would tickets sell , to me Vegas would be the better option

 

 

Take That Las Vegas residency given the green light by venue owner

 

Take That are reportedly one step closer to getting a Las Vegas residency, with a venue owner giving the prospect the green light.

 

The iconic ‘90s boyband – now comprised of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen – first teased the idea of a run of residency shows in Nevada last month, telling fans that the stint would be the last thing on their bucket list. Now, it seems that the idea is now close to becoming a reality, as a venue owner in Sin City has come forward and claimed that he would love to host the trio in the future.

 

The comments came from Michael Gruber, who is the founder of the Voltaire venue at The Venetian. Speaking as part of a new interview with The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre column (via Music News), he said: “ “I love Take That. I absolutely want them to perform at Voltaire. It is perfect for them.” He continued, saying that there were previous plans discussed that led them to think they “would have a show” locked-in, but ultimately “it didn’t work out in the end.”

 

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=...3NzA5&ntb=1

Edited January 9Jan 9 by Sydney11

In the carpool karaoke Howard explained how they turned everything down. The Americans were desperate for them to come over and do all of the promo. The difference with Take That is they only went to countries which had accepted them and given them hits. They never forced themselves upon nations like the Backstreet Boys, for example, who came in like a freight train military operation and not accepting no for an answer.

 

Jason even mentioned in an interview how they were happy being popular in Belgium just as much as if they were in America. I just feel they wanted their music to be heard and authentically recieved, which it was. As a result there are far less Take That records in charity shops and bargain bins across the world.

 

As far as America/Canada are concerned. They were both given different approaches and styles.

 

Canada (single releases):

 

It Only Takes A Minute: February 1993. Peak#20. They had an interview on national TV programme Spotlight (MTV/TRL type). Robbie did an original rap and Howard beat boxed for their performance. They also performed across Toronto in schools and there is footage of this and an interview on youtube. They performed It Only Takes A Minute.

 

Then nothing singles wise... for years. The albums were released --as they were worldwide, regardless of success-- (TT & Party and Everything Changes) and it is reported on a Canadian streaming site bio of them that 'Everything Changes' album did well across Canada, yet didn't break top 100 due to a lack of any promotional effort by the group. It basically stuck around for months, but in the lower sections.

 

Back For Good. #1 for two weeks in Autumn 1995.

 

These next releases the band had already split up.

 

Pray released with a Canadian music video (4 of them) #55. March 1996. (

) None of the charisma/iconic visuals of original but Robbie was gone so couldn't use that.

How Deep Is Your Love #80 in JULY 1996. Zero promotion.

 

Nobody Else & Greatest Hits both Top 40 albums with good chart runs, not flash in the pan. Nobody Else selling Platinum (100,000 copies).

 

Patience #21 March 2007. HOWEVER, this was a 'New Entry' as were all the entries on that chart as charts prior to Canadian Hot 100 forming (that week) went missing in transition. Therefore Patience potentially could have been higher during those missing weeks/months.

 

They have a sizeable and committed fanbase across Canada.

 

Status: Huge chart topping single in 1995 but overall mainly an inconsistent Top 40 act - '93,'95,'96,'07.

 

USA:

 

The approach and style was different here. As far as I'm aware they only officially released three singles for airplay/cd here.

 

A Million Love Songs: September 1993. Didn't chart. Promotion appearence on Regis and Kathy Lee show.

Love Ain't Here Anymore (US remix - I much prefer the pop version) included for 1995 US version of Nobody Else. Released, though not sure when '94,'95,'96? but didn't chart. Zero promotion.

Back For Good. August 1995, peak autumn of that year. #7, over a month in Top 10. Billboard Hot 100 year end charts, 1995 and 1996. Promotion as a four (David Letterman, Today show, MTV profile in LA, Regis and Kathy Lee) and knowing the group was ending by time of US Top 10 placement. It shows. These interviews and performances of the song are the worst I have seen. Not terrible or bad, just lacking spark. Jaded.

 

I believe BFG was a bucket list move by them to prove to themselves that if they played the game and promoted/spent time there they could have a hit, and they did.

 

No other releases as far as I'm aware. Clearly NMS thought ballads like Boyz II Men, the dominant leaders of that time in the US, was the way to go. I disagree.

 

TT & Party was released in September 1993 with altered track listing. Didn't chart.

Everything Changes probably released like in Canada/worldwide.

Nobody Else mid 1995. Peak #69. Little promotion for album, knew group was ending.

 

Take That has a committed presence and has been referenced in US by One Direction, New Kids on the Block, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees so are known by name and as the premier boyband in Europe of their time. I see loads of comments in the US stating they heard of them through these bands.

 

Had they stayed all five together and had the hit with Back For Good in America then been able to follow that up with another or two. They could all have had a profile to go off on in America either as a group or solo.

 

Back For Good and Never Forget have featured in American publications (Billboard, Rolling Stone etc) for greatest boyband songs. They featured on E's! Greatest boybands countdown as the highest non-US act and likewise for Mojo's (Canadian) Best boybands of all time, ballads list and best UK acts not to break America. Therefore they are known and respected by the industry there, just not the average person.

 

There was a backlash against pop acts in America during those Take That years due to the lipsyncing of Milli Vanilli and New Kids being overly mass merchandised.

 

Status: One Hit Wonders - '95.

 

Take That can tour North America and South America. An article collected social media data and routed a tour map of the cities, nations and venues. 10 years old now but I feel their presence has actually grown in the US.

 

https://www.radiocremebrulee.com/take-that/...tour-in-the-us/

Edited January 9Jan 9 by nirvanamusic

@ nirvanamusic, thanks for this text and the link.

Got some new facts about Take That and their story about that period. And defo will re-watch Karaoke Carpoll after all these years...

 

Very pity James Corden isn't there now. He would help Better Man movie too, no doubts.

Well, it has been a very good interview with US fan/interviewer and what's even more important Rob teased him about the concert in New York.

 

So let me put this video here because of it:

 

I think TT would do really well in Las Vegas with their shows.

 

Hope it happens for them.

I agree about Take That in Las Vegas, I think their mixture of songs would be perfect for that setting.

 

Never Forget peaked at #7 on the Billboard Lyric Find U.S chart in May 2023 after their perfomance at the coronation, and #4 on the Lyric Find Global chart. Curiosity has definitely been raised over the years and they were featured on the US Paramount documentary: Boybands: Larger Than Life this year.

 

The American music industry commentator stated how they were the biggest pop band and dominated music in Europe at the time, then played a clip of Back For Good.

 

Because Take That were a boyband and not many had success to that level worldwide, I think it is easier for them to be referenced, listed on countdown charts and promoted in America. Robbie being a solo artist against many succesful international solo artists is harder to be seen.

 

In my opinion.

 

In November 2023 both Angels (#3) and Come Undone (#5) charted on Billboard Lyric Find U.S chart. Do we know why?

Edited January 10Jan 10 by nirvanamusic

There are quite some nice reactions in twitter from Americans who went and were positive surprised. I think even when the movie will not do so well he is known ow in the USA :-)

US are apparently seriously thinking of shutting down TikTok in the next week or so. Glad that Robbie trended there for a bit. Imagine the last trend in the US being Americans not knowing Robbie 😂

There are quite some nice reactions in twitter from Americans who went and were positive surprised. I think even when the movie will not do so well he is known ow in the USA :-)

 

:cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

Remember this unreleased track 😂