Robbie Williams
Buy? Ignore
With 15 Brit Awards and 55 million album sales, Williams represents a money spinning throwback to a recent Golden Age that music business bigwigs long for. But the 24-carat ‘classics' such as Millennium, Feel and Angels from Robbie's heyday are now products of a distant, more opulent era. After losing a large portion of his audience with farcical Rudebox, Robbie now attempts to crawl from the wreckage with fabled producer Trevor Horn manning the orchestrated battlements and song-writing collaborator Guy ‘Angels' Chambers returning to lend support. The confessional comedic lyrics and mid paced ballads just doesn't cut it.
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Robbie does his George Michael-lite delivery — typical of his off-the-peg approach to pop idolatory — but the raised eyebrows and knowing nudges of Rob's cheeky choppy persona soon tire. Blasphemy, the reunion with Guy Chambers, is particularly poor. Rob plumps for Bowie, with a side order of Beatles, on the futuristic psychobabble of Deceptacon and a wan melody adds queasiness to the self-pity that runs through this record like lettering in a stick of rock. With tunes that are mediocre, very average vocalising and an expensive production that highlights its weak content, reality will definitely kill the Video Star.