Robbie Williams has been having a very public reckoning with his past, of late. There was Better Man, the Oscar-nominated 2024 film that depicted the former Take That member as a CGI chimp (inspired by his view of himself as a performing monkey). Then came a moving four-part Netflix documentary, in which he reflected on his early taste of fame, aged 16, in one of the world’s biggest boybands, and how that led him down a dark path of drug addiction and depression. Narrated largely from the cosy safety of a goose-down duvet, Williams offered a poignant look at the bloke behind all the bravado. Yet even as he reminded us of why we fell in love with him in the first place – bellowed “Angel” choruses and all – there was an album he felt he never got to make, one he would like to have released in the immediate aftermath of his Take That departure in pursuit of solo stardom.
So, right off the back of 2025’s euphoric Oasis reunion – reminding us all of the unifying power of a bloody brilliant rock band – the irrepressible scamp comes out with Britpop, his first non-Christmas album in a decade. It’s an unabashed joyride, full to the brim of hook-laden tracks with soaring riffs and anthemic choruses. Is it the highest calibre of songwriting? Hardly, there are a few rhymes that’ll definitely make you wince. But if anyone can pull off a cheesy line with aplomb, it’s Robbie, and this record does contain some of his best tracks in aeons. There’s even a reunion with his ex-bandmate Gary Barlow, with whom he seems to have buried the hatchet over all that past hurt.
