Robbie Williams
Sing When You're Winning

THE REVIEW

Robbie Williams competes with peers like Justin Timberlake for the crown of sovereign of international pop too soon abandoned by the late Michael Jackson. Active since the very early nineties with the cult band Take That, one of the most successful groups under the Union Flag, Williams left the team in 1995 to fully dedicate himself to a solo career. The debut of Life Thru a Lens is perhaps more famous for the artist's drug&sex scandals and his fierce battles with the Gallagher brothers than for hits like Angels, Let Me Entertain You or the cover of George Michael's Freedom 90, however, a nice pile of millions of copies sold ended up in the former Take That's pocket. The "refined" James Bond-like twist with Millennium and his second work I've Been Expecting You was his definitive consecration and the springboard for about a decade of enormous success, at least until the semi-debacle of the overly electronic Rudebox. The latest Reality Killed The Video Stars and Take The Crown allowed the now-reformed bad boy to regain lost ground with the previous rogue production, although with a lesser chart performance in singles compared to past glory.

Apart from the already mentioned temporary dance-revival digression of the already mentioned Rudebox and the swing-jazz plays proposed with Nicole Kidman in Something Stupid, Williams has never strayed too far from the pop-rock aura with strong britpop hints that has always distinguished him since his debut and he has always disdained the chameleonic shift, at least musically, typical instead of other male and female pop stars. Sing When You're Winning, released in 2000, was perhaps the "farewell" album to Oasis-style britpop that had enclosed Life Thru a Lens and I've Been Expecting You, and the definitive embrace of light rock still not abandoned. Dry-cleaned the Bond-like tuxedo from Millennium and banned the relative fake refined and lavish atmosphere, Robbie returns to wearing the clothes of the sly street boy, funky and brazen with the famous music video of Rock Dj, the disco-rock'n'roll anthem to extreme striptease that also includes in the package skin, muscles, and internal organs. Classy is also the duet with the female pop counterpart Kylie Minogue (also a half princess, being snubbed in narrow-minded United States) in Kids, an anomalous sensual-funky formula compared to the rest of the English main performer's production.

Rock Dj and Kids represent the diamonds of a simple, effective, and even captivating mainstream pop craftsmanship, albeit with few sonic digressions. Further gems, also released as singles, lie in the sincere britpop farewell of Let Love Be Your Energy, the nostalgic folk-country ballad The Road To Mandalay and the ideal sequel of Millennium's strings, namely the big single Supreme complete with a video tribute to fellow Formula One driver Jackie Stewart. Further mentions go to the hard rock flashes of Forever Texas, the dark and subdued ballad If It's Hurting You, and the hyper classical Better Man.

With Sing When You're Winning Mr. Williams managed to combine brazenness, the ability to balance on the already precarious trapeze of the music biz, and began to leave behind a youth a little too quarrelsome and reckless, stained by wrong friendships that quickly turned into bitter and malevolent rivalries among dominators of Her Majesty's Kingdom in the form of charts. Williams, having moved past the extremely retro vein of Swing When You're Winning, would continue on this path with the tumultuous Escapology until he once again found himself with the first signals of Intensive Care and the too showy sequins of Rudebox (an album instead very rich and tasty, made so also by the precious collaborations with the monumental Pet Shop Boys). Currently, little Robert of England has settled down, getting married and having children, yet it remains a pleasure to listen to the post-adolescence of an artist who, despite excesses and media pastiches (see moments of pure androgyny and the much-talked-about rumors about his sexual preferences), has never strayed from a respectable throne of "little prince of pop" still occupied today and difficult to conquer.

Robbie Williams, Sing When You're Winning

Let Love Be Your Energy - Better Man - Rock Dj - Supreme - Kids - If It's Hurting You - Singing For The Lonely - Love Calling Earth - Knutsford City Limits - Forever Texas - By All Means Necessary - The Road To Mandalay.