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14.09.12 Music Week 19
and this is still good enough’. This might be the time they say, ‘Actually we’ve had a rethink…’ So what I’m saying is, I might get another 10 years out of this, but that kind of depends on this record.
And I guess after Rude Box, Reality… and the Take That reunion, the Robbie narrative now needs the triumphant solo return, doesn’t it? That’s the next obvious chapter and the one everyone’s pulling for.
It is, I guess, but it’s all about perception. Rude Box sold more than Progress. Reality Killed The Video Star sold more worldwide than Progress. But you’d never know that, not in
the UK, because there’s a tendency to think nothing else matters. And in the Robbie Williams soap opera, that narrative you mentioned, it was time for the kingdom to crumble and me to be dethroned, that was the next twist in the tale, irrespective of whether it was happening or not... actually, Reality probably didn’t sell more than Progress. But nearly.
Was the Progress experience and the whole reunion part of the rejuvenation process for you? And has it, in fact, contributed in a weird way to reinvigorating you as a solo artist? It was… it was brilliant on many levels. For a start, it slayed a few dragons and demons of the past, all that bitterness and resentfulness: gone. Also, I had this vehicle where I could go and be
me, remind people, but I also had the safety of being with the four other lads. Because it’s kind of easy being in Take That; it’s lovely, in fact. My performance as a solo artist is me for two
hours going [waves hands around] ‘Waaaaahhh!’ Every second of every minute there’s the voice in the head saying, ‘What am I doing? What am I going to do next? Go here, go there. Say this, say that, no don’t say that you fucking idiot. Why did you say that? Oh that was good. Ha ha, they’re laughing. Why are they laughing? Sing, you fucker, sing!’
A CROWNING GLORY?
Take The Crown is released on Island Records on September 5. It will be preceded by a single, Candy (co- written with Gary Barlow) on October 29. The full track listing is as follows:
01 Be a Boy 02 Gospel 03 Candy 04 Different
05 Shit on the Radio 06 All That I Want 07 Hunting for You 08 Into the Silence 09 Hey Wow Yeah Yeah 10 Not Like The Others 11 Losers (feat Lissie)
With Take That, you can sometimes melt into
the background for a while, look at the audience, get a cigar on, watch a couple of the other lads dance for a bit.
What was your big fear going into the reunion? I didn’t have any fears. I was just excited.
Is that because all the issues had been resolved and so you were comfortable that professionally and personally it was going to work? Yeah, two years before that we’d sorted everything out. I think I’d got Reality Killed The Video Star coming out and they’d got The Circus coming out and we played each other our records at my house. And The Circus sounded exactly like it should sound: like a big, fuck-off pop record. And I remember thinking, that’s what I should be doing. That’s what got me excited again, to work with people who were in that rich vein of form, with the added bonus of them being my old mates.
How have you left it with the guys? Might you do something else with them? I really hope so. It’s totally up to them if they want a fifth member or not.
It’s that fluid is it? Absofuckinglutely. I’m hoping I can do a couple of things on my own, then do something with them at some point.
Would that be new material, or some live events? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, but I really hope we do something.
Was it hard to pick a single and what made you come up with Candy [co-written with Take That bandmate Gary Barlow]? Candy existed before any of the other records existed. It was a wipe of the brow and phew, we’ve got one. Especially as, for the last couple of albums, we haven’t had a lead single. It’s what I consider my get-out-of-jail-free card. It sounds big, fuck-off, radio-friendly. It sounds like one of those songs you’ll be sick of in six months when it’s been played to death – hopefully. If this was two albums ago I might not have
released it, I might have gone for something more ‘interesting’. But my thinking never wavered, no matter what else I wrote, this was the bona fide first single: fuck off, let’s go.
“I was young, Gary [Barlow] was young, we wound each
other up, I disliked him, we both grew up, we both
changed and we both really like each other now. It’s not even remotely complicated”
It contains one other collaboration with Barlow
(Different). The majority of the other tracks have been co-written with the relatively unknown Australian duo of Tim Metcalfe and Flynn Francis. Hey Wow Yeah Yeah (with which Williams has indicated he may open his live shows) was written with Boots Ottestad, while Losers is a cover of a Barbara and Ethan Gruska composition. The album is produced by Jackknife Lee, who also receives a co-writing credit on Different and Hunting For You. Take The Crown is the big, brash, confident Robbie Williams pop record that his fans were longing for but maybe didn’t dare expect. If it had a subtitle it would be ‘In Case You’d
Forgotten…’ It’s got more hooks than an Abu Hamza lookalike convention. Not wishing to denigrate the art of the record
executive, but you could have chosen the lead single by chucking a dart at the inlay sleeve. You couldn’t have missed. Because there are no misses. Just hits – big pop hits.
The phrase King of Pop has been gently and diplomatically retired for a few years now, and it’s probably best to leave it that way, but with this album, Williams reminds his fans, his critics and the world, that he’s at the very least a crown prince.
You wrote it with Gary, of course. How does that process work? Do you ping files to each other around the world or do you sit around a piano or with acoustic guitars? With Gaz… well, you see this was a house track that we’d got and Gaz cut it up, put it into a pop- song format and I wrote the lyrics and sang the melody over the top.
That sounds really simple, but I guess it can’t be… [Self deprecating nod and almost conspiratorial tone of voice] It is. It really is.
One of the many books written about you is called Robbie and Gary: It’s Complicated. But it isn’t, is it? No! And I don’t think it ever was. I was young, he was young, we wound each other up, I disliked him, we both grew up, we both changed and we both really like each other now. It’s not even remotely complicated.
Before I got the details of the album sent across I decided that Losers was probably the most personal lyric [I’m ashamed I ever tried to be higher than the rest/I spent so much time when I was young just trying to be a winner]. Then of course I found
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