I thought about capturing my thoughts on the current war on Iran, but honestly I don’t think I have a unique perspective… given that there is already an unending wave of pundits all chiming in and covering every last kerfuffle. The musings of a mid-forties Xennial who sees this whole conflict as nothing more than a failed attempt to distract from the Epstein files has most definitely been done before in the blogosphere.

So let me wax poetic about Robbie Williams instead.

Unfamiliar? Let me distill the brash Brit for you! Robert Peter Williams is a fifty-two-year-old ex boy-bander from Great Britain who had a few modest hits in the USA in the late nineties / early aughts, but remains a top-selling artist in the UK and abroad. He got his big break with the group Take That alongside Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, Howard Donald, and Jason Orange. Williams lasted about five years total in the band before being bounced out due to drugs and alcohol. But at the bottom of that well, Williams picked himself up for a spell, found some amazing co-writers and producers, and kicked off a solo career that remains intact.

I personally found Williams when his single Millenium hit the US charts in 1999. While I didn’t have much access to cable television or music videos, I did stumble across Williams’ ode to James Bond — and was immediately charmed. His swagger, accent, and sense of humor were enough to garner snagging The Ego Has Landed, his first stateside LP release. As Wikipedia wasn’t exactly ubiquitous in those days… I didn’t do a lick of research before buying the CD, and letting it become a mainstay in my five-disc changer for the better part of my junior and senior years in high school. By the time I’d eventually found out his boy band roots, I was too much of a fan to fall prey to the potential emasculated panic that teens my age might suffer should they have dared admit publicly they enjoyed… pop music. The horror!

That initial disc, Ego itself was a repackaging of the best songs off his first two UK releases — Life Thru a Lens and I’ve Been Expecting You, respectively. For my ear? It was literally all killer no filler. It kicks off with Lazy Days, a punchy wall of bright guitar that gives way to William’s working-class (but not Cockney) accent smoothly crooning about finding joy. It’s a song deftly soaring in a major key that is hard not to smile through. It’s followed by Millenium and then No Regrets. The latter takes the energy decidedly down into something mildly shoegazey. It helps, I suppose, that Williams was a pal of Oasis back then. As the album plays on, Robbie twists and turns through various genre-bending pop — including country twinged, gothic, to arena rock. I simply can’t describe how me all of this was, sonically. A mishmash of sounds all offered through an audible snicker with a soupçon of ennui? Thy name was Fish, man!

A year later, Robbie dropped Sing When You’re Winning, right as I started college. As I recall, I forced one of my new pals at the Herron School of Art to take me to the Circle Center Mall in downtown Indy, so I could race to Sam Goody to pick it up. “Fish. They won’t run out of copies. I don’t even know who the hell that is”, said my ride. And lo, I raised up two fingers in a V-formation, and skedaddled at top speed (for me) to throw my quid down for 12 new tracks of Williams wonderment. Same as Ego, this CD saw the continued partnership of Robbie and his writing partner Guy Chambers. And the strong swath of songs meandered through the sonic expanse, and delivered disco-inspired grooves, sullen ballads, and acoustic jams with aplomb.

Another year, another album, but this time Robbie cemented his bonafides within my collection. Swing When You’re Winning was a disc of Rat Pack big band bombast and ballads. Pop music? Sure. But the newest song on the album was still decades old! This oddity, released in 2001, showcased something special about Williams. A fearlessness to let his musical loves be worn on his sleeve. The album didn’t feel like a cashgrab — it didn’t even make the charts in the US, but sold 4M copies worldwide — it was an homage sung from center stage. I’d also denote it included a duet with Jon Lovitz, and given my personal fanboying over The Critic meant this album was now bulletproof.

From here, Robbie’s output did not come as fast (nor need it be…), but he continued to put forth his Puckish pluck, and I remained a fan. Admittedly by the time Take the Crown dropped in 2012, I was now a father, and this now the third Chambers-less album was no longer hitting all the buttons in my headspace. A few good tracks, much like the 2 albums before it (Rudebox, and Intensive Care respectively), meant I remained a fan of Williams, if not the entirety of the catalog (not that it mattered). 

Flash forward to 2024, when Better Man was released. A “Jukebox Musical Biography” of Robbie Williams — where Williams’ life is writ large on the big screen, and the titular man is depicted as an uncanny valley chimpanzee. Seriously. The idea is novel, no doubt, but from the first frames of the trailer after realizing what I was watching, I unceremoniously bowed out. Love the man. Love the music. But the CGI abomination / recreation of his life was a bridge too far for me. And while I could appreciate the obvious metaphor — that Williams himself is perceived merely as a dancing chimp — it’s ham-fisted enough for me to feel the pangs of kashrut. 

So, why are we here, exactly?

Well, it turns out Robbie released a new album here in 2026! Britpop, in my ears, is a return to form for one of my most beloved Brits (next to Hugh Laurie, Benedict Cumberbatch, and the Spice Girls). When the album unlocked itself on my Spotify account (oh, we’ll talk about music ownership soon enough, chums), I was admittedly tepid. A quick glance over production credits saw a dizzying amount of folks, none of whom I was savvy enough to know… save only for Gary Barlow. But the album kicks off with guitar riffs straight from former Black Sabbath shredder Tony Iommi. Robbie jumps in with the most metal version of his dulcet baritone as he skirts the line between a tone between Billy Idol and his standard fare. The album continues in that cacophonous spread as Williams covers arena glam rock, somber serenades, and whatever exists in between. Nearly every song is anthemic; with perhaps the only misstep a nightmarishly slow retread of the first track, now sung as a bit of a banal ballad. A single listen of G.E.M.B. though and you’ll forgive this green-eyed mental boy for giving it a go anyways. It rocks!

While it’d be gauche of me to think I might have lured a few of you into giving Robbie Williams a try… I am luckily old enough now to simply not care if I did or not. I likes what I likes, and according to millions of lads and lasses across the pond, I have decent taste. Consider this my strategic strike on your Spotify list, kiddos.