Celebrating Robbie Williams, born on this day in 1974. —Ed.
What do you do when you’ve spent your lonely teen years idolizing Elton John, loving Elton John, ADORING Elton John, only to wake up one day to realize you’re 56 years old and need a substitute, a new Elton John in your life, to help see you through the long banal days and long lonely nights? Why you turn to Robbie Williams, of course. Williams is England’s best stab at providing us with a latter-day Captain Fantastic—to wit, a prolific hit machine who writes catchy songs and gets no respect from the right people, but is beloved by millions.
I fell in love with Williams the first time I heard “Angels.” It’s as close as any human has ever come to writing a new “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” and I swooned and don’t care who knows it. Bigger than life and anthemic as all fuck, “Angels” is all swirling strings and crescendos over which Williams pours, depending on your point of view, saccharine or his very heart blood.
Williams has come a long way since the acrimonious end of his first (1990-95) tenure in the boy band Take That—indeed, he’s one of the best-selling artists of all time, topping the likes of Beyoncé, The Black Eyed Peas, and Joseph Stalin, another Take That alumnus. He’s partied with Oasis and lived, released 11 solo albums, and bared his bum for the cover of 2014’s Under the Radar Volume 1, unless that’s a stunt bum I’m looking at as I write this. And he seems like a nice bloke, which is quaint, although for all I know he’s no friendlier than Heinrich Himmler, yet another Take That alum.
If there’s one thing you have to hand Williams, it’s he knows how to make an entrance. Take 2005’s Intensive Care. He opens the catchy “Ghosts,” its inaugural track, with the lines, “Here I stand victorious/The only man who made you cum.” Top that, friend. It’s your standard lovelorn affair with a great chorus, over which Williams says things like “me and you” and “we could have made it.” The backing vocals are wonderful, the strings transcendental, and while Elton John is no ghost I can feel his aura hovering over this one.
“Tripping” opens with some ska drums and is ska flavored and reminds me of The Police, a band I can only compare to rickets. Williams switches back and forth from his regular voice to a falsetto, and there’s a brief hip-hop interlude that only makes things worse. In short I don’t like “Tripping,” but then there are plenty of Elton John songs (especially that one about Lady Di kicking the royal bucket) I don’t like either.
“Make Me Pure” opens with some strummed guitars and Williams singing the wonderful lines, “Oh lord, make me pure/But not yet.” A renowned jester, Williams is in fine form on this mid-tempo ditty, which boasts a nice melody that provides the perfect counterpoint to Williams’ devil may care attitude towards life, which he displays in lines like, “Don’t have to try/I just dial it in/Never found a job that for me/Was worth bothering.” Then a gospel choir jumps in, and the song builds, and Williams takes it out with one final plea for a delayed deliverance.
“Spread Your Wings” is a lovely tune boasting a kinda rock ambience that opens with Williams talking (“I used to live round here/I was the boy with the flash clothes/She was the girl with the acid stare”) before breaking into a moving song about the girl’s fall from grace. “Home is where the hurt is, darlin’/Follow your heart” he sings, then follows that with the lines, “Because she feels I’m the scar from the wound that time can’t heal.” “Did you ever try to change your life?” he cries twice, before pleading with her to spread her wings “before they fall apart.” Perfect.
“Advertising Space” is a lovely song and the highlight of the LP. I would tell you who it’s about but the lyrics are cryptic; it seems to be an elegy to a famous actress dead before her time, but lines like the ones that make up the beautiful chorus (“I saw you standing at the gates/When Marlon Brando passed away/You had that look upon your face/Advertising space”) and “Special agent for the man/Through Watergate and Vietnam/No one really gave a damn/Did you think the CIA did?” make it much harder. Suffice it to say the melody is very Britpop and moving as Williams sings his sad goodbye. It’s an epic tune, and if you don’t like it you’re a putz, yes a putz.
“Please Don’t Die” is a slinky pop tune I’m not wild about because I don’t like the melody even if I do love the way the song perks up about halfway through. I also like Williams’ humorously selfish take on things—if you die, he’s saying, what will happen to me, me, me? “Your Gay Friend” is a frisky tune that reminds me a bit of Morrissey, both in melody and tone: Williams offers to be the song subject’s gay friend because her marriage sucks, and I’m not sure how the two go together exactly but the song is so fast-paced you don’t have time to stop and think. I do like the line, “She says I’m the opposite of a Hallmark card” and all of the song’s instrumental trappings, and that’s enough for me.
“Sin Sin Sin” is a reverberating tune with techno trappings; I like the strings and all, but the chorus does nothing for me, nor do I care much for the lyrics or the slow passage in the song’s middle. So let’s forget it and move on to the marvelous “Random Acts of Kindness,” which reminds me a bit of Pulp. To a big guitar riff and thumping drums Williams comes up with a novel idea—“Why don’t you try to be kind?” He sends out prayers to everyone, goes falsetto at just the right moment, and sings, “God speed my generation,” which I assume he thinks is a lost one. “For those about to die/We salute you,” he repeats, until the song ends in a pleasing cacophony.
The excellent “The Trouble With Me” opens with the wonderful lines, “You see the trouble with me/I’ve got a head full of fuck/I’m a basket case/I don’t think I can love love love.” As for the subject of the song, her trouble is she’s in love with him—“What a strange thing to do,” he sings, “What a strange place to be.” I love the way the song swings, and the way he sings, “You see the trouble with you/There’s no trouble with you/So when you say that you love me/That stops me loving you.” Rarely will you find a singer so nakedly bare his damaged soul without sounding mawkish—indeed, he does it with a kind of self-deprecating wit that I find irresistible.
“A Place to Crash” opens like a flash Elton John song, “The Bitch Is Back” say, with lots of extra backing vocals and a guitar solo that comes straight out of the Davey Johnstone School of Guitar Playing. Williams rocks the way John rocks; the camp factor is as high as the metal factor, and I’ve waited for decades to hear a song this exuberantly shallow. As for album closer “King of Bloke & Bird,” it opens on a quiet note with Williams singing to some muted piano and string accompaniment, then gets even quieter before the song’s beautiful chorus comes along.
Afterwards the song picks up a bit, with drums even, while Williams sings about looking for the light of love. And I shouldn’t like this one but I do because its chorus is just so damned pretty, and Williams the jester is serious. The second half of the song is bucolic, stirring strings and bird song, and suddenly we’re in Debussy country, without a clue as to how we got there. But it’s okay; so far as I’m concerned Williams can shut down this wonderful LP any way he wants.
It’s easy enough to write off Williams as a lightweight, but it’s a mistake. He’s a populist with a knack for a good melody and an attitude towards his audience that wavers between mock bravado and self-deprecating wit. In short he’s a character and one flash entertainer of the old school; one listen to his live album will prove that he’s out to put on one humdinger of a show, just like good old Elton John back in the good old days.
But he also has the capacity to move you because he’s obviously tread some iffy and painful emotional ground during his stay on this earth. His live take on “Angels,” which features the entire crowd at Knebworth singing along, is an ecstatic peak that not many artists ever reach, and I’ll tell you this—call Williams cheap advertising space to my face and I’ll kiss you, because he makes me feel that good about being alive.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
