Take the crown --- Robbie Williams --- 2012 (Island)
Once upon a time there was a boy called Robbie. And he was a bad boy. In and out of rehab, battling addictions to everything from alcohol and coke to disprin and Lucozade (!) Robbie was certainly the man least likely to emerge from the breakup of Take That as the last man standing. While within the group he wrote little, sang less and was famously (or infamously) described by that bard of the verse Noel Gallagher as "that fat dancer from Take That". Yet in 1996, after the breakup of the band and some time after he had already quit them, Robbie embarked on a solo career that resulted in a rise to fame that could really only be described as meteoric.
"Let me entertain you", he grinned cheekily, and all the girls (and some boys) giggled and blushed and said "Yes please!" Robbie has released eight solo albums between 1997 and now, with this being his ninth. There's a lot of energy and youth on this new album, and while that's good (and sells well) it comes across to me as somewhat playing to the gallery. Williams is after all now approaching forty years of age, but here he's singing and writing (or at least co-writing) as if he's still seventeen. I just think it shows a lack of maturity and a resistance to getting older.
See, the trouble is that yes, Robbie was a maverick, a loose cannon, a bad boy, but that was then and this is now, and fifteen years later he seems to be in a sort of Peter Pan mode, refusing or finding himself unable to grow up. The album is predictably full of sly digs at his "enemies", with lashings of his famous ego on top, and while there are some good, even great songs on the album, it's all a little hard to take seriously.
Opening on "Be a boy", it's a high-energy, uptempo pop song with that annoying "Whoa-oh-oh!" chant that seems to be everywhere these days. Robbie has been carrying one massive chip around for fifteen years now and it doesn't look likely to fall off his shoulder anytime soon, with little digs like
"They said the magic was over/ They said I was losing it/ I don't think so!" just really serving to reinforce the insecurity that has seen him party, blag and womanise his way through his career.
Now don't get me wrong: I'm a fan, although it may not seem like it from this review. In fact, I'm preparing a whole piece on his career for transmission later this year. But I like artistes to grow up and show some maturity. When you're pushing your fourth decade it's time to stop playing the teeanger. To slightly paraphrase Fish, "Pulling seventeen with experience and dreams/ Sweatin' out a happy hour/ When you're hiding thirty-nine..."[/i] and you would think that after having sold what, seventy million records and having countless number one singles and albums, a pop icon on both sides of the water and easily eclipsing the success of his parent band that Robbie would be happy to put the mistakes of the past behind him, but no, he's still at it, as we find in the second track, "Gospel", where he sings
"I drink to you/ You always wished me well/ And to those who don't/ Go **** yourselves!" He did something similar on "I've been expecting you", where he added a litlte message to one of his teachers who told him he would amount to nothing, and back then you could forgive that: the guy was on top of the world, rather unexpectedly, and ready to give the finger to anyone who said he wouldn't make it. But that was a long time ago. It seems however that rather like Father Ted in the Christmas Special, he's still settling old scores, and to be frank, it's getting boring and stale.
The energy and effervescence in the new album is partially due to his pairing up with young Australian songwriters Tim Metcalfe and Flynn Francis, and indeed the production of Garret "Jacknife" Lee, whose work we mentioned in our recent review of Two Door Cinema Club's latest album "Beacon". But youth and energy are all very well, if you're young and energetic. Now I guess you'd have to give Robbie the second part --- his concerts rarely disappoint, and he puts his all into them, and you can tell he loves his music --- but he's no spring chicken anymore. And though much of the songwriting concerns lessons learned, there's a sense of naive partygoing and bedhopping that just doesn't ring true when the guy singing the song is coming closer to what we generally term middle-age.
It's a shame really, because these criticisms do the album something of a disservice. It's a pretty good record really, though I feel not a patch on his earlier efforts, and the opening two tracks as detailed above are catchy, well written and played. Either, or both, could and probably will be hits. However it's the third one in that is in fact the hit, the lead single from the album and already a number one for him, and this is where I have yet another problem. I think it's possible "Candy" has only done so well because Robbie Williams fans, starved of any new solo output by him for three years, would probably buy anything he released. So is that a proper measure of the single's worth? To quote himself, I don't think so.
Only one of three tracks on the album to be not written with his newfound mates Metcalfe and Francis --- who are surely going to be a double Guy Chambers for him in the future --- it's in fact co-written with his old mucker from Take That, Gary Barlow, and Jacknife himself. It's quite an annoying song, I must say, though infectiously catchy. It rides on a sort of children's chant/nursery rhyme, which I can only really describe as "Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah nyah-nyah!" You know the sort of thing; you hear children singsonging its like in a hundred games they play in the street. It also bounces along on a kind of summer/pop beat with a little of calypso in it, and it is, to be frank, fairly throwaway, not what I would have expected the first single to be, but there you are. It's one of those songs that although you may hate it, won't bloody get out of your head. Which is, I suppose I have to grant, the mark of a good pop song.
And so it goes. "Different" is a good bit more mature, a fuller song with some nice orchestration and a desperate plea to be given another chance. It has that familiar Robbie Williams sound identified with tracks like "Strong" and "No regrets", and is a very decent track. It's followed by "**** on the radio", which is where it all breaks down again. The inclusion of such a song may seem a bold move, but if you're expecting a searing indictment of the state of popular radio airplay and current trends in music, well, get ready to be disappointed. Back to the writing pair of Francis and Metcalfe, and the song exists solely on its "cheeky" title, which Williams gleefully jams as many times into the chorus as he can, repeating that chorus also whenever it's possible, while emphasising the four-letter word.
It's almost like a kid who has discovered a bad word, and makes a point of using it as much as possible. Okay, the sentiment is there, but the lyric doesn't support the title, and I can bet, "brave" as the title may be, this won't be released as a single, or if it does, that word will be changed to something more palatable, because radio listeners and the general public don't want to hear the word ****, er, on the radio, do they? But the biggest irony about the song is that it is dancy, throwaway, forgettable pop pap, exactly the type of thing Williams appears to be attacking in the lyric. Perhaps this is intentional and it's a clever dig at himself, saying look at me, I'm no better than the people I'm slagging off: we all have to make a buck. But again, I don't think so, and I believe the message, if indeed there is or was intended to be one, is lost in the totally substandard song.
And yeah, it won't get out of my head! Like many of these songs, even the ones I consider really bad, I just keep humming them in my head. Dammit! They are catchy though.
This is the point where it all begins to slide a little downhill really. "All I want" and "Hunting for you" (is it my imagination or does he sound like he's singing
"Tonight I'm horny for you!"?) are not bad songs, per se, but they're unremarkable and I don't really find them sticking in my head. I must say though the former gives me pause in a way, as I notice that everything about Robbie Williams is, well, about what he wants. In fact, if I go back through his catalogue, I find it hard to find one song that's not written about him, or from his standpoint. I can't find a song he wrote about someone else --- even "She's the one" refers back to him --- and it would have to be said that quite contrary to the title of his 1999 compilation album, the ego has a long way to go before it lands anywhere.
Ironically, tracks like the previous one and "Candy", which I would consider far inferior to either of these two, make more of an impression. There is however some hope when "Into the silence" comes around. With a lovely soft low keyboard intro and a rattling, jangly guitar it's a strong, powerful song with a certain sense of U2 about it, and probably if I'm honest one of the standouts, if not the standout on the album. The same can't be said unfortunately for "Hey wow yeah yeah", which is as terrible as the title makes it seem, total written-in-nine-seconds-what's-next territory; probably go down a storm on the dancefloor. It's interesting though if only for Robbie's terrible Beastie Boys-style rap!
Then there's an attempt to finish strongly with "Not like the others", which again catalogues Robbie's many conquests ---
"Got lots of lovers/ You and me/ Are not like the others" --- as he attempts to persuade the current woman in his life, or in his bed, that she's special. Oh- kayyyy.... For me this kind of jumps back to "Monsoon", from "Escapology", with a twist: there he was berating all the girls he had slept with who then went on and sold their story to the rags, whereas here he's more or less admitting that he just uses women. Hmm, big revelation there Robbie. Maybe it's meant to refer to his recent marriage to Ayda Field, and with a baby daughter now to think of, perhaps he's re-evaluating his lothario lifestyle?
This could be why he ends the album on "Losers", which features a duet with someone only credited as "Lissie", who I'm sure people cooler than me will recognise and know who she is, but it's the acoustic track on the album, as there often are on his recordings. I don't know why: maybe it's an attempt to legitimise what is essentially a pop star as a bona fide rock star, but "I've been expecting you" had "She's the one", "Sing when you're winning" had "Love calling Earth" and the last album I heard from him, "Escapology", had "Sexed up". Okay, they weren't exclusively acoustic but they began and mostly continued on the acoustic guitar, certainly not your average pop instrument.
There are, however, certain problems I see with this song. First, the lines don't scan at all. The lyric seems uncomfortable, ill-fitting, almost as if it was written and then music shaped around it but not very well. It's stilted, halting,unsure of itself. I can't actually blame Robbie for this, as it's the last of three tracks on the album not written by him, and the only one in which he has no hand at all, the song being penned by Barbara and Ethan Gruska, a cover of the Belle Brigade's song off their debut album. Maybe that's why it doesn't fit, as it's the first time I recall Robbie including a cover version on any of his album ("Somethin' stupid" notwithstanding: that was on a covers album in the first place) and it just seems out of place.
But even apart from that, and allowing for the fact he didn't write it, it's hard to take a guy seriously when he sings about not being bothered about making money and being popular any more, when his current net worth is around ninety million and he's the idol of half the world. Rings a little hollow, to me, and almost comes across as arrogant and something of a put-down. It's beautifully sung by this Lissie person, no doubt about that, but overall I find it a very awkward song, both to like and even to listen to, and I feel it closes the album very badly.
TRACKLISTING
1. Be a boy
2. Gospel
3. Candy
4. Different
5. **** on the radio
6. All that I want
7. Hunting for you
8. Into the silence
9. Hey wow yeah yeah
10. Not like the others
11. Losers
But in the final analysis, what I say or think is not going to matter one bit to Robbie Williams fans. The album has already hit the number one spot, has already gone gold (platinum in some territories) after only two months, and looks set to be one his biggest-selling and most successful albums to date. I find it weak in places, good in others, occasionally great but for me it's not a patch on "Escapology" or even "Sing when you're winning", and I think he's taken the easy path here, penning (or co-penning) catchy pop ditties that will play well on the dancefloor and dominate the radio for the next few months no doubt.
I'd preferred to have seen something more mature, but then, I guess that's why he is where he is, or where he wll soon return to, and why in the end, it seems only natural and inevitable that he will indeed take that crown he has his heart set on.