That Time Robbie Williams & Gary Barlow Recorded A Duet Together After Not Speaking For Years.

"Whatever I said, whatever I did, I didn't mean it..."

Welcome to That Time, a series of articles about a time in a musical artist’s career that was particularly memorable.

This week: That time former Take That members Gary Barlow and Robbie Williams ended their long-standing feud and recorded a duet together.

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Some time ago, I wrote this really long piece on Gary Barlow for Bubbling Under, which was essentially an excuse to follow my self-imposed rules and write about Robbie Williams instead.

The piece was epic in length. I came down hard on Barlow’s solo material for not being my cup of tea and generally felt the piece was long and rather harsh. I whittled it down to the piece on Robbie Williams’ attempt to break North America. That piece ran a while back and went over fairly well.

It seemed like the concept of two people who couldn’t stand each other when they were younger sitting down, writing a song together and recording it as a duet could be its own separate piece. And not in a “Quick! Grab the popcorn!” kind of way. More like in a way that I imagine felt like catharsis for the duo.

Part One: Who The Heck Is Gary Barlow?

Gary Barlow had wanted to become a performer after seeing Depeche Mode on Top Of The Pops when he was ten. By the time Barlow was 12, he was performing in the UK working men’s clubs.

Barlow’s first exposure to a national audience came in 1986 when the teenager entered a Christmas song contest on BBC’s Pebble Mill At One. His composition “Let’s Pray For Christmas” wasn’t the winner, but the aspiring musician kept plugging away, performing live. I’ll admit that the song is cringeworthy, but Barlow’s 70’s singer-songwriter influences peak out, and it doesn’t sound like something your average fifteen-year-old would write. Listening to this, it’s obvious that Elton John was one of young Gary Barlow’s influences. It’s no shock that Barlow later wound up working with the legendary singer-songwriter, singing background on the 1994 soundtrack classic “Can You Feel The Love Tonight”

A few years later, as Kurtis Rush, Barlow released his debut single, a cover of John Paul Young’s 1978 hit “Love Is In The Air”.

The single went nowhere, but the photographer who took Barlow’s headshots got him in touch with music impresario Nigel Martin-Smith. Martin-Smith had recently scored a hit with singer Damian, who had a top ten UK hit with a shockingly awful cover of “The Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Part Two: Take That, NKOTB!

Inspired by the success of New Kids On The Block, Martin-Smith had hoped to create a male vocal group for the UK market. Martin-Smith was introduced to Barlow, was impressed with the young singer’s abilities as a songwriter and decided to build the group around him. Four other young men were chosen via auditions: Aspiring DJ Howard Donald, dancer Jason Orange, bank employee Mark Owen, and a teenager named Robbie Williams. Eventually, the group was named Take That.

One of their first TV appearances was on UK pop show The Hitman and Her, where Orange had previously performed as a dancer. Likely because of the Martin-Smith connection, they were introduced by Damian.

A string of early singles had moderate success at best. The group performed regularly to build up a fanbase and gradually settled on a sound that consisted of uptempo covers of disco classics as well as Barlow’s adult contemporary-leaning ballads.

Towards the middle of 1992, Take That reached their breakthrough when a cover of Tavares 1975 hit “It Only Takes A Minute” landed in the UK Top Ten.

Take That became massive in the UK. They followed “It Only Takes A Minute” up with a run of hits; there was merchandise, including dolls. A slew of copycat acts also popped up.

Tensions were forming within the group. Robbie Williams was having issues with alcohol and cocaine, as well as undiagnosed ADHD and other mental health issues at the time.

Williams was becoming resentful of the fact that his ideas weren’t being taken seriously by both Martin-Smith and Barlow. He did sing lead on three of the band’s hits, including a cover of “Could It Be Magic”, but his lead vocal for a cover of Dan Hartman’s “Relight My Fire” was scrapped in favour of Barlow’s after the producers felt it wasn’t working.

I mentioned in a previous piece about Williams’ solo career that Take That were moderately successful in Canada. They had one other hit there with “It Only Takes A Minute”, and a few minor hits such as “Pray”, a UK #1. It was the more lucrative US market that proved elusive.

By 1995, they finally had a US breakthrough when the ballad “Back For Good” reached the Top Ten on the Billboard charts. It’s easily one of the only ‘90s boy band ballads I can tolerate, likely because it’s not far off from Elton John in the way it sounds. I feel like its success was less in Take That being a hit UK boy band and more in the fact that it was a solid, well-written adult contemporary pop ballad.

Take That imploded not long after. About to tour and tired of Williams’ increasingly difficult behaviour, Barlow, Orange, and Martin-Smith confronted Williams, who agreed to quit the band.

Take That completed their tour as a four-piece and then broke up at the start of 1996. Of the five, only Barlow, Williams, and Owen attempted solo careers. Jason Orange attempted an acting career on stage and TV, and while Howard Donald did record an unreleased single, he decided to return to being a DJ instead.

Part Two: OK, so what did they do next?

Mark Owen and Gary Barlow both had brief success as a solo artist. Owen had a decent start with the surprisingly good “Child”. After that he had modest success as a solo artist before Take That reunited in 2006.

Barlow had two number-one UK singles as a solo artist and then experienced diminishing fortunes with each follow-up.

A cover of Joe Diffie’s 1994 country hit “So Help Me Girl” was pulled as the third single from Barlow’s debut “Open Road”. While it stalled at #11 in the UK, it became Barlow’s only Hot 100 entry when it peaked at #44. He followed that up in North America with “Superhero”, a track that bubbled under at #106.

Robbie Williams was the final member to attempt a solo career. He teamed up with Guy Chambers of World Party and initially had modest success. That all changed with “Angels”. He then became the superstar most thought Barlow would become.

This was likely due to the fact that the songs Williams wrote with Guy Chambers in this period were solid. There were ballads (“Angels”, “She’s The One”), uptempo pop songs (“Millennium”, “Rock DJ”), and some rockier tracks like “Old Before I Die”. Plus, he made a bunch of creative videos where he wasn’t taking himself seriously.

At some point in the mid-2000s, Take That got back together. The reunion was a success, and to this day, some form of the group continues to perform and release new music. Jason Orange retired from both music and the public eye around 2014, and they’re currently fronted by Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, and Mark Owen.

This new incarnation of Take That proved popular in the UK and Europe. It was a comeback for Barlow, who had been working as a songwriter by this point.

They also got into a bizarre feud with The Arctic Monkeys that I remembered seeing at the time on a Much broadcast of the Brit Awards, and it appears to have stretched to other broadcasts as well.

Williams had a dip in his career around this time with the overlooked Rudebox album. That release had him collaborating with artists like The Pet Shop Boys. There’s also a story involving unsold copies of the album that would make a great future addition to this series. (This has since been debunked by a reader)

Part Three: At last: The duet and the aftermath

Around 2010, longtime rivals Barlow and Williams buried the hatchet. They wrote and recorded a duet together called “Shame”. Because both artists were massive in their home country, this became a news story in the UK press.

According to the Songfacts entry for “Shame”, their falling out provided the basis for the song.

This can be further backed up through a brief glance at the actual lyrics. The opening verse sung by Williams

“Well there's three versions of this story mine and yours
And then the truth
Now we can put it down to circumstance, our childhood, then our youth
Out of some sentimental gain I wanted you to feel my pain
But it came back return to sender

And also this bit of back and forth:

Williams: “So I got busy throwing everybody underneath the bus”
Barlow: “And with your poster 30 foot high at the back of Toys R Us”

It was the first time the pair had ever shared vocals together on a track. There were some promotional appearances. To quote Williams during his appearance on British DJ Chris Moyles’ radio show:

"I spent the last 15 years thinking what I was going to say. We had that big chat and the most amazing thing happened at the end of it, we both said sorry to each other and we both meant it," he said. That's all we needed. It just lifted so much off my shoulders that I didn't know was still there. It was the start of a very magical 18 months that we've had since then, writing songs together, getting to know each other. "It's nice being able to be grown-ups and hear each other and say sorry because not many people can do that."

He also announced getting back together with his former bandmates. Not long after, Progress, Take That’s sixth album, was released. It was the first since Nobody Else to feature Robbie Williams as an official member.

Admittedly, there were a few years where Williams had fallen off my radar, and I was unaware he’d rejoined Take That. I think at this point, all I knew Take That for was being Robbie Williams’ old boy band that had some kind of weird on-air feud with the Arctic Monkeys at the Brit Awards circa 2008.

Out of the 11 tracks on Progress, Williams had songwriting credits on seven. Five were in collaboration with Barlow, and one was with Mark Owen. Lead single “The Flood”, was a UK #2 hit.

This was followed by the more dance-oriented “Kidz” (No relation to Williams’ Kylie collab “Kids”), a more electro-inspired number which was oddly a Barlow-Owen composition. It’s kind of a guilty pleasure/banger.

I did mention in my previous piece on Williams that he only stuck around for the one album. A couple years later, he came back as a solo artist and scored another UK #1 with “Candy”. It’s up there as one of my favourite Robbie Williams solo tracks. I also discovered while working on these pieces that Gary Barlow co-wrote “Candy”. So, by this point, they’d recorded a duet together, Williams had rejoined Take That for a spell, and Barlow had even helped Williams score a solo comeback.

Anyway, Jason Orange left Take That around the same time and retired altogether from both the music industry and the public eye. Williams seems to be on friendly terms with the other three, but there are no plans for him to rejoin Take That anytime soon.

Part Four (I promise this is the last part!)

Take That have continued as a trio. While their singles don’t sell like they used to, their albums are still wildly successful in the UK. Their most recent album, 2023’s This Life reached #1 on the album charts there.

Both Take That and Robbie Williams had some entries into film last year. While Take That had released a (truly awful sounding) jukebox musical called Greatest Days a couple of years previously, they had a boost when director Sean Baker used their 2008 UK #1 “Greatest Day” prominently in 2024’s Best Picture Winner Anora.

They appeared at the BAFTA awards ceremony to perform it:

Williams’ biopic Better Man was released at the very end of 2024. I’ve gone into detail previously about how the film was unfairly dumped on by Americans who weren’t familiar with Williams and decided to base their opinions on the fact that a CGI monkey was used to stand in for Williams. It flopped for a myriad of reasons (likely American backlash, Williams’ low North American profile, as well as the fact that it cost a lot of money to make).

The film was brilliant, likely one of the best things I’d seen on the big screen in years. Hopefully, it becomes a cult classic someday.

Barlow was aware that he wasn’t portrayed in the greatest light; the film ends before their 2010 reunion. He’s the closest thing the film has to an antagonist besides Williams’ self-hatred. This hasn’t affected his relationship with Williams, as this GQ interview with the three remaining Take That members post-BAFTA awards points out.

Williams and Barlow also still occasionally collaborate together. During lockdown, they did a video call and performed “Shame”. While they likely aren’t best friends, they finally did reach a mutual understanding.

Next Week: TBA