Send "Robbie Williams " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Nme |
 "Don’t call it a comeback, look what I invented here”. Yes, let’s look. How fitting that Williams made, as the showbiz fairytale script puts it, ‘his triumphant return’ on The X Factor, since he was the original ‘anyone can do this’ superstar. He was crap, but his knowing winks told audiences he knew he was crap, and allowed them in on a great old wheeze, while flatteringly suggesting stardom was in reach of the everyman. He’s since become the icon of the ‘Me’ generation, whose songs are about himself, and any fuck-ups are fed into the celebrity magazine maw and shat out as another part of his personal journey. Cut to the present, where we find the abject ‘Rudebox’ has been assimilated into his story as a wake-up call paving the way for this new album. It’s packaged well as a return to form. Proven unit-shifter is the producer (the album title references Horn’s ’80s one-hit wonder with ’ ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’), who gives the album one main plot, ‘The Return Of Classic Robbie’. This means we get piano and string ballads to remind audiences of ‘Angels’ (‘Morning Sun’ is Tears For Fears’ ‘Sowing the Seeds Of Love’ reimagined as ‘Sowing the Seeds Of Self-Pity’), and a sub-plot, ‘Robbie Chimes With The Sound Of Now’, in which ice-cool euphoric disco reminds audiences of . This sub-plot is far more fun than the main, with ‘Deceptacon’ (no, not a Le Tigre cover), 'Starstruck’ and ‘Superblind’ all bringing those ‘Big Robbie Choruses’ effectively into the Balearic-Italo-Whatev template, although Williams buggers them up with hopscotch lyrics such as “Microwave yourself today, save you for a rainy day” on ‘Deceptacon’. If you want a cold, eroticised disco vibe, don’t invite Norman Wisdom....full text |
| Bbc |
| Reality Killed the Video Star marks Robbie Williams’ overdue return to the pop world, exuding a coolness and consistency absent on 2006’s Rudebox. It finds him working alongside producer Trevor Horn, whose catalogue of hits is substantial enough to turn even a sometime egocentric like Williams green with envy. And the pairing largely works well, with Reality… featuring a wealth of strong, single-worthy tracks. The first song to be released as a single, Bodies, isn’t the most immediate number on this 13-track affair, but acts as a valuable bridge between the swagger-and-strut front of Rudebox and the introverted, understated highlights to be found here. A strange brew of string flourishes, rumbling low end, oriental undertones and even an Enigma-style break into Gregorian territory, Bodies is superb on radio, sitting between so many sound-alike offerings, but seems a little bloated here. Nevertheless, it’s very much that wonderful cliché: a return to form. Last Days of Disco is a track that clicks on the very first listen – reminiscent of Eurhythmics and featuring the inevitable line “don’t call it a comeback”, it’s a far better tribute to the synth sounds of the 1980s than anything from the hot-right-now La Roux. This is partly down to Horn’s involvement – he produced much of his best-loved fare during the decade, and worked with the similarly styled Pet Shop Boys in 2006 – but Williams’ half-whispered vocals suit the icy beats superbly. It’s not as recognisably Robbie as Bodies, but there’s no doubt it’s a far superior song....full text |
| Guardian |
| In 1967, the Beatles were planning a new film. In search of a suitable script, they approached Joe Orton. He handed in a dark, lavishly camp farce called Up Against It, the plot of which variously required the Fab Four to become embroiled in a plan to assassinate the prime minister, cross-dress, be caught in flagrante and commit murder. Alas, the Beatles rejected Up Against It, Paul McCartney having smartly spotted that both the script and its author were "a bit gay". "We didn't do it because it was gay," he explained. "We weren't gay. Brian Epstein was gay. He and the gay crowd could appreciate it. It wasn't that we were anti-gay," he added. "It's just that we, the Beatles, weren't gay." Buy it from Buy the CD Robbie Williams Reality Killed the Video Star (Deluxe CD & DVD) EMI 2009 Having established fairly thoroughly that they weren't gay, the Beatles went on to make Yellow Submarine instead: not bad, but, no insurrectionist transvestite humping-and-murder-fest. Up Against It joined the pantheon of tantalising rock what-ifs, alongside the Rolling Stones' film version of A Clockwork Orange, the acid house album Shane McGowan lobbied the Pogues to make, and Paddy MacAloon's concept album about Michael Jackson. To that illustrious list, we can now add the improbable name of Robbie Williams. In 2007, he apparently recorded an album he later described as "career suicide" and "Robbie's gone mad music", presumably a sonic expression of the period in which he grew a beard, put on weight, searched the California desert for aliens and helpfully began dressing as a pop star who'd gone crackers. It sounds fascinating, but instead, Williams opted to make his comeback with Reality Killed the Video Star, a Trevor Horn-produced album that, he notes, "ticks all the boxes"....full text |
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