The Heavy Entertainer

I’ve just read Chris Heath’s Reveal, a fly-on-the-wall biography of singer Robbie Williams during the years between 2011 and 2016. The author is clearly a friend of the artist, entrusted with access to friends, family and colleagues, yet expected to be truthful in the recounting and honest with his own opinions regarding whatever is happening at the time.

It’s a fascinating read, really well-written, though it helps that I’ve been a huge RW fan for years. The man is a complicated set of individuals for sure, but he is also uncannily self-aware. This makes him alternately brilliant, frustrating, scattered, single-minded, hilarious, enraged, thoughtful, reckless, remorseful, insecure, and astonishingly adept at channelling his inner neuroses into charismatic swagger on stage. He’s quick with a story (sometimes unwisely), but he is unfailingly honest. And people don’t know how to react when a public figure is so relentlessly, well, public. So you either love him or you hate him; it seems there’s no middle ground, and the man himself seems prone to one or the other extreme on any given day.

I don’t remember where I first heard of him; I think it was when his single Millenium was released in the 1990s. Back when MuchMusic actually played music videos, his clip for Feel appeared in the Daily Top 10 for weeks. What a wonderful, powerful song. When something so magical hits me, I tend to get obsessive about the artist. I loved it then and I love it now, though he has released countless tunes in its wake that are equally compelling in a variety of ways.

The guy can sing anything. His two swing albums are maybe my favourites, but there are no throwaways on The Heavy Entertainment Show—I guess you can call it a pop album, but there’s rock and soul on it as well. It’s loaded with irony, sarcasm, sincerity, love, hope, humour, catchy riffs, rhythmic hooks, and asks the question: why should he go away? A lot of people really dislike him, and yes, he’s courted animosity in the past, but really, is it fair to decry a talent so epic in scope? Only if one envies it, methinks.

It’s remarkable to me, reading this book and listening to these albums, that the man at the forefront is so different from the man behind the music. I recognize humility in so much of what he does, yet there are moments during his show when he struts as cockily as they come. And that’s the other remarkable thing: he hasn’t cracked America. He lives in LA, but I don’t think he’s toured the States. Truly, I haven’t investigated that far, but Chris Heath also wrote a book in 2004 called Feel which allegedly chronicles RW’s pursuit of fame in the promised land and it is most definitely next on my reading list.

One final note. The UK press seem to loathe him for being consistently successful (we can’t count Rudebox, and he doesn’t, either), as if pop stars are by law restricted to a limited shelf life. I am less inclined to consider Robbie Williams a pop star than he is an entertainer of the old school variety. He gives it everything he’s got and takes nothing for granted.

Good on you, Rob. And thank you.