Robbie Williams has revealed details of several star collaborations on his upcoming album, Britpop – including a track with Gary Barlow.
The former Take That singer teased details at a launch event for the record, which will be his first studio album of original songs in almost a decade.
He also announced he will play his “smallest-ever ticketed gig” as an intimate show for 500 fans, performing both his debut album Life Thru A Lens and Britpop in their entirety, following his current European stadium tour.
Williams listed some of the artists he has collaborated with on the new album, including Black Sabbath‘s Tony Iommi, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes, and Barlow.
The relationship between the Take That stars famously deteriorated after Williams left the group, but the pair fixed their friendship in later years – and the Angels star reunited with the band for their Progress tour in 2011.
Their song on Britpop is called Morrissey, about the singer-songwriter and former frontman of The Smiths.
Answering questions from comedian Joe Lycett, who hosted the event, Williams said the song was written from the point of view of “somebody that is stalking Morrissey and is completely obsessed and in love with him”, but did not give any further detail.
Coldplay’s Chris Martin also collaborated on the album. Pic: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP 2024
Another track, Human, is about AI. “We are being told that we’re all about to be replaced, and we need clothes and we need food, so there’s a chance that we will be removed,” Williams said. “Whether it’s a prophecy, we shall see. But, yeah. It’s a song about what we’ve been told about AI.”
The singer rose to fame in Take That in the early 1990s before quitting and going on to have huge success as a solo star, with hit songs including Let Me Entertain You, Angels, Feel, No Regrets and She’s The One.
In 2023, he reflected on his life and career in a documentary series, in which he spoke about his struggles with the limelight and his mental health at the height of his fame. Last year’s Better Man – a biopic of his life in which the star was portrayed as a monkey – also tackled those issues.
Take That in their 1990s heyday: (L – R) Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Mark Owen, Williams and Jason Orange. Pic: PA
Now, he says he is back with the kind of album he would have loved to have released after he left Take That in 1995 – the “peak of Britpop” and the year of Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Pulp’s Different Class, and Blur’s The Great Escape.
“I’ve kind of been musically a bit aimless for a little while because I haven’t known really what to do,” Williams said at the Britpop launch. “I chased yesterday an awful lot. Which happens.”
When you become hugely successful and then “commercial radio, whatever, stops playing you… you think, shit, what was it that I did?” he continued. “I just spent the last 15 years looking backwards. And I think with this album, if I am going to look backwards, I might as well just clear the decks, go back to the start and head off from there.”
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Williams also spoke about other projects, including artwork and investment in arts education. “I want the entertainment industry to be somebody’s Plan A and Plan B,” he said.
“You know when you go to your parents, you say, ‘I want to be a singer, I want to be a dancer or be an actor, I want to go into the entertainment industry’. [The response is] ‘You better have a Plan B.’ I want to create the Plan B for people, too.”
Robbie Williams will play at Dingwalls in Camden on 9 October. Britpop is out the following day.
