rudebox
In response to his question: “Please tell me the new Robbie Williams album gets better after repeated listening. I’d hate to hate him.”
I propose the following….
See, here’s the thing:
I have spent my entire life (well, since the age of about 15) in love with an English Singer songwriter called Steven (A.J.) Duffy. He made record after record of pop, folk, folky/pop, rock even electro dance. And they were bought by me and (possibly, but not definitely) his mother.
He has a lyric that says, effectively
“Tomorrow, I’ll be dropped
By BMG.
Been dropped by everyone
so that don’t bother me”
and he’s not wrong. Every major British Label has dropped him at one time or another, and it looked as though he and his beautiful clever, spiky pop was doomed to fade away.
Then Robbie announced that he’d always loved SAJD, that they were writing and producing, and that the next album would be a Williams/Duffy collaboration. And it was ‘Intensive care‘. And I waited with breath so baited I went magenta then a nice silvery-blue. And it was… OK. A bit like both of them were trying hard not to offend the other. And you know what that’s like. No spark. No risk. Nothing to gain or lose. Like a bar pickup where you end up thinking ‘I should have just gone home and done it myself’.
Anyways, along comes the R-U-D-E-B-O-X (’up yer jacksie, split yer keks’) and I actually like it.
It’s career suicide. It’ll alienate all the ‘boys ‘n’ girls’ who bought the earlier albums. And it’s not good enough as an electro album to create a whole new market. But the production on the opener is lovely and rich and bleepy/blurby (even if the lyrics are woooooooeful).
After that - “Viva Life on Mars?” “Burslem Normals”? “King of the Bongo”? Forgettable.
“Lovelight” “She’s Madonna” “Keep On” “Never Touch That Switch” and “Actor” “Kiss me”(By Steven Duffy) - great electronic pop. Cool. Catchy. Dancy (in a shuffle round the bar with a fag in one hand and a can of Stella in the other way). Madonna & Actor have even ended up on D’s playlist.
“Louise” and “We’re the PSB” are karaoke. No Idea why they’re on there, since it’s Robbie over the original trax. Pointless.
The 80’s and the 90’s are poignant. Not great pop, and no idea how many times we’re going to have to sit through the psychoanalysis of Robbie Williams, but sweet nonetheless.
And there are some stinkers (decorum prevents me from listing them - they’re noticeable by their omission from the above), but with 17 tracks, you get that.
Overall? Ben Folds has just released an album comprising of the best of 4 EPs he put out over the past few years, with a new track and some stuff off of soundtracks. It’s an honest ‘grab bag’ of where he’s been. The Robbie album, sold (and, one assumes, made) as a conscious, cohesive single project, feels like a mix tape of stuff, some of which, quite frankly, should never have made it passed quality control.
That said, in answer to your question: It does get (much much) better. But, in some places, it gets worse, and in others, it just fades away; it’s an album for the iPod generation, since you’ll pick your fave 4 tracks, and forget the rest.