Robbie Williams has revealed particulars of a number of star collaborations on his upcoming album, Britpop – together with a observe with Gary Barlow.
The previous Take That singer teased particulars at a launch occasion for the document, which will probably be his first studio album of authentic songs in virtually a decade.
He additionally introduced he’ll play his “smallest-ever ticketed gig” as an intimate present for 500 followers, performing each his debut album Life Through A Lens and Britpop of their entirety, following his present European stadium tour.
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Williams and Barlow performing collectively in 2010. Pic: AP/ Mark Allan
Williams listed a number of the artists he has collaborated with on the brand new album, together with Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes, and Barlow.
The connection between the Take That stars famously deteriorated after Williams left the group, however the pair mounted their friendship in later years – and the Angels star reunited with the band for his or her Progress tour in 2011.
Their track on Britpop known as Morrissey, in regards to the singer-songwriter and former frontman of The Smiths.
Answering questions from comic Joe Lycett, who hosted the occasion, Williams mentioned the track was written from the viewpoint of “somebody that is stalking Morrissey and is completely obsessed and in love with him”, however didn’t give any additional element.
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Coldplay’s Chris Martin additionally collaborated on the album. Pic: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP 2024
One other observe, 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 mentioned. “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 within the early Nineteen Nineties earlier than quitting and happening to have enormous success as a solo star, with hit songs together with Let Me Entertain You, Angels, Really feel, No Regrets and She’s The One.
In 2023, he mirrored on his life and profession in a documentary sequence, through which he spoke about his struggles with the limelight and his psychological well being on the peak of his fame. Final yr’s Higher Man – a biopic of his life through which the star was portrayed as a monkey – additionally tackled these points.
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Take That of their Nineteen Nineties heyday: (L – R) Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Mark Owen, Williams and Jason Orange. Pic: PA
Now, he says he’s again with the form of album he would have beloved to have launched after he left Take That in 1995 – the “peak of Britpop” and the yr of Oasis’s (What is the Story) Morning Glory?, Pulp’s Totally different Class, and Blur’s The Nice Escape.
“I’ve kind of been musically a bit aimless for a little while because I haven’t known really what to do,” Williams mentioned on the Britpop launch. “I chased yesterday an awful lot. Which happens.”
Whenever you grow to be massively profitable after which “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.”
Williams additionally spoke about different tasks, together with paintings and funding in arts schooling. “I want the entertainment industry to be somebody’s Plan A and Plan B,” he mentioned.
“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 next day.
