That Time Robbie Williams tried to break North America

Or that time Robbie Williams became moderately popular in Canada.

Welcome to That Time…

That Time… is a series of articles about a time in a musical artist’s career that was particularly memorable.

This week: That time Robbie Williams tried to break North America.

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Generally, I’ve found boy bands to be one of the worst musical fads of the 1990s. Often, they mistook oversinging or sounding whiny as soulful (Nick Lachey shrieking “She deserves better than me—eeeee” on “The Hardest Thing” always stands out), and the production left a lot to be desired. Yet, people ate it up in droves.

Sure, there was New Kids On The Block about a decade previously, but most of the later craze can be traced back to the UK acts that emerged while North America was preoccupied with grunge, namely Take That and their rivals East 17.

Take That wasn’t perfect, but they had their moments. They were just as prefabricated as most of the groups that followed in their wake, but there was one exception—Gary Barlow, the defacto leader of the bunch also moonlit as a songwriter.

They also had a member named Robbie Williams, who went on to bigger and better things. At least in Europe. And for a while, Canada.

Although he’d been fired over a year previously, Robbie Williams was the last Take That alumni to attempt a solo career.

His solo debut was a 1996 cover of George Michael’s “Freedom”, which peaked at #2. After this, Williams was introduced to songwriter Guy Chambers (World Party). Williams and Chambers would collaborate for the next several years. I would go as far as to say Chambers was one of the factors that led to Williams having the strongest solo career out of the three.

Released in April 1997, “Old Before I Die” was Williams’ second single and the first to show what he was capable of as a solo artist.

It wasn’t until his fifth single, “Angels”, that Williams started to be seen as an artist with staying power. He released a pair of UK albums (Life Thru A Lens and I’ve Been Expecting You) in quick succession and then set about trying to break North America.

It was Williams’s seventh solo single (and first UK #1) that was used to launch the singer in North America. “Millennium” used a sample of Nancy Sinatra’s 1967 Bond theme “You Only Live Twice” as its main hook. The video starred a tuxedo-clad Robbie in a satire of 60s-era Bond films. It’s essentially the first glimpse of Robbie Williams starring in a big-budget video where he doesn’t take himself seriously. It’s something that wound up working wonders for him over the years.

I remember “Millennium” being all over both Much and Much More Music. Perhaps because of Williams’ past as a member of Take That, YTV also glommed onto him as well.

There seems to be some sort of revisionist history that, because Robbie Williams couldn’t crack America, that meant the entirety of North America. Luckily, YouTube exists, and there’s some online evidence of how popular he was in Canada circa 1999.

Instead of releasing his first two UK albums over here, a compilation titled The Ego Has Landed was issued to introduce the singer to North American audiences. In Canada, the album hit the Top 20. Williams also had hit singles here with “Angels” (#18) and “Millennium” (#9).

Of course, it’s another story across the border. The Ego Has Landed reached #63 on the album chart. While “Millennium” and “Angels” both charted, neither reached the Top 40, and Williams couldn’t even crack the Bubbling Under chart after that. Sadly, “Angels” is probably best known in North America now for a horrifying mid-2000s Jessica Simpson cover version. Robbie Williams deserved a much better fate.

His third album, 2000’s Sing When You’re Winning, stalled at #110 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. It’s lead single “Rock DJ” was a hit everywhere except the US, where for whatever reason, likely due to its video, the single failed to chart.

The video for “Rock DJ” is infamous. It starts like a garden-variety pop video. Robbie dances while a group of women rollerskate around him. To get their attention, Robbie takes his clothes off, does a striptease, and finally rips his skin off. He then flings his muscles at the roller skaters like fresh meat. The DJ finally notices him at the end when he’s a dancing skeleton. A disclaimer pops up stating, “No Robbies were harmed in the making of this music video”. I’m squeamish as Hell and still loved this video. People still talk about it to this day, which says something.

I saw an interview with Robbie Williams recently where he admitted to jumping out at random people in the costume. Part of me wishes footage of that existed.

The video was banned in several countries. In others, an edited version was shown, while the original would be aired at night. “Rock DJ” was constantly aired on Canadian music video channels, briefly dented the Much Music Top 30 countdown (A search told me it hit the lower reaches), and I even remember the single having a decent amount of radio play. Sing When You’re Winning went Top 20 here, and “Rock DJ” hit a respectable #22. I don’t remember seeing any edited versions of the video, and I am pretty sure even YTV showed it in the original, unedited form on a more rock-oriented video show for older teenagers that they attempted briefly.

After this point, Robbie averaged about one Canadian hit per album up until around 2002 or so. “Kids”, the Kylie Minogue duet that followed up “Rock DJ”, wasn’t a hit here, but it had respectable airplay on TV. It was about a year off from Kylie’s second, very brief run of North American hits that started with “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” and lasted til roughly 2003’s “Slow”.

I remember a review for the single in Spin stating that it probably wouldn’t do well in the US because of Minogue. They weren’t wrong.

Minogue, like Williams, continues to be massive in the UK and Europe as well as Australia, but her North American profile is fairly small in comparison. She was the perfect duet partner for Williams, but it would have taken a Gwen Stefani (Thank God Robbie picked Kylie instead) for the single to be as massive over here.

Williams followed his third album up with the lounge-inspired “Swing When You’re Winning” and scored his fourth Canadian hit with a cover of “Something Stupid” that teamed him up with Nicole Kidman, of all people. Kidman isn’t someone I think of as a singer, but this was around the same time as Moulin Rouge, so it wasn’t completely outlandish.

To my knowledge, Williams only scored one final Canadian hit after this, but it was his second Top Ten since Millennium a few years earlier. The solid “Feel” was released towards the end of 2002. I remember it having a heavy amount of video play, and also seeing the CD single readily available. At the time, I was casually collecting CD Singles and could kick myself for not buying it.

By this point, I’d become a regular reader of imported copies of NME and vaguely recall a whole piece they did asking Americans about his new album. Most of them either didn’t know who he was or only remembered the video for “Rock DJ”.

He did appear on American TV to promote the single. I’m not sure what talk show this is, but Katie Couric was filling in that night.

Following “Feel”, he seems to have stopped concentrating on North America. I’ve also since read that Williams prefers the relative anonymity he has to come and go here.

Williams continued to record some interesting material. He collaborated with Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy in the 2000’s and even recorded a cover of Duffy’s mid 80’s hit “Kiss Me” at one point for his 2006 album Rudebox. This was perhaps his greatest video since “Rock DJ”.

He also collaborated with dance-pop legends Pet Shop Boys for the fantastic “She’s Madonna”. By this point, Williams had a bit of a drop-off in popularity, and the single unfortunately only made the UK Top 20.

For a spell, Williams briefly rejoined Take That. The group had reunited in 2006. Williams and de facto leader Gary Barlow hadn’t been speaking for years until they patched things up and recorded a 2010 duet together called “Shame”. That, however, is a story for another week.

After leaving Take That a second time, Williams had his first #1 hit in some time with “Candy”, my favourite of his later output. I found out some time after initially writing this piece that “Candy” was a co-write with none other than Gary Barlow.

More recently, Williams received attention with the release of his biopic Better Man. The film was unfairly criticised by people who didn’t see it due to its use of a CGI monkey to stand in for Williams. Among people who did see it, the film had fairly high reviews. I saw Better Man in an empty discount theatre and can attest that the film was brilliant. Hopefully, it will gain a cult following in the years to come.

Further Reading: Since Better Man was released, there have been a few articles about Robbie Williams here on Substack.

Kevin Pettit

of See You At The Movies review of Better Man can be found here.

Rich Cain

of Project 1001 covered Williams’ UK debut album Life Thru A Lens recently. You can find that here.

And finally,

MK Piatkowski

of Song Of The Day has written several excellent pieces on Robbie Williams which can all be found here.

Next Week: TBA