Robbie Williams has always liked to make a splash – so it’s fitting he has chosen to release his 13th album, the winkingly titled Britpop, two weeks early as a surprise. It is, save for a 2019 Christmas album, only half of which was original, his first record in 10 years.
In that time Robbie has put on an art exhibition, made a Netflix documentary and helmed a biopic as a CGI chimp, all of which sought to portray his struggles with addiction and mental health issues, and which – perhaps save for the art – left us with less of a sense of a cheeky outlandish showman and more a complex and troubled person who, despite it all, still craves the spotlight.
Britpop is clearly made in the same vein – with more than a touch of bitterness directed at his 90s nemeses, Oasis. The album cover shows a portrait of young Robbie in an Adidas track top being defiled by protestors wearing T-shirts saying “just stop pop” – his proclivity for big-hearted crowd-pleasers and sequins never seeming quite cool enough next to the Gallagher brothers’ macho swagger, that boyband sentimentality always leaking through somewhere.
The album shows a portrait of young Robbie in an Adidas track top being defiled by protestors wearing T-shirts saying ‘just stop pop’This was, he said, the album he wanted to make when he left Take That in 1995; as in the biopic, Better Man, here Robbie tries both to dispel that pop-star image and excuse it. The album veers between pop punk, grungy 90s rock and Radio 2-friendly ballads. And through it all (sorry), his oh-so-familiar voice shines – heavy influence there is plenty, but this could only ever be Robbie.
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The more defiant numbers include opener “Rocket”, also the lead single, which launches at breakneck pop-punk speed into the album and, featuring Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, screams “ROCK!”. “What a time to be alive!” sings Robbie in the chorus – it’s like doing a shot of aniseed infused digestif, but before you start the meal – clearing the pipes and setting the tone. Unfortunately, the din dies down quite quickly, as the album continues with the chugging, big-bridged “Spies”, and resolutely sunny “Pretty Face”, whose lyrics “Such a pretty face, such a pretty face… she’s everything I love about this world” leave much to be desired.
The album hits its stride a few tracks later on “All My Life”, where Robbie ditches the bubbly everyman act and gets reflective. “All my life / I’ve been chasing visions at the edge of my mind”, he sings, over a steady beat and a Gallagher-esque melody. “Masochistic but I’m always entertaining/I know I’ll die but I’ll never leave the stage” – there’s a heavy sense of self-loathing here, mixed with those rays of genuinely moving pride that came through at the end of Better Man.
Robbie still has a knack for combining theatrics with authenticity (Photo: Jason Hetherington)On “Human”, featuring the Mexican duo Jesse & Joy, he goes further: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but your words could make me kill myself”. Robbie still has his sense of humour – the next track, an 80s-inspired ode to Morrissey, proves that – but Britpop feels most authentic when it wallows, and explores these deeper – if not hugely complex – feelings. After sluggish love song “You” and a slightly hammy, theatrical sounding “It’s OK Until the Drugs Stop Working”, replete with strings, Robbie reprises the first track in a more subdued way, featuring acoustic guitar, laced with sadness, undercutting the bombast of the opening. It adds a meta air to proceedings, and rounds off the album with an emotive, authentic feel.
If Robbie’s aim in this new stage of his career is to add depth to his work with a strong narrative arc, it’s definitely working. And despite several stodgy moments, on Britpop he is finally being true to himself – and all his contradictions.
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