In the '90s, Robbie Williams was an absolutely huge British pop star -- maybe the single biggest. First with the boy band Take That and then as a famously messy solo artist, Williams willed himself to icon status. With all that said, Williams was never really considered part of the '90s cultural zeitgeist known as "Britpop," no matter how often he partied with Oasis. So it's willfully perverse that Williams chose Britpop as the title of his new album. Maybe it's not as willfully perverse as getting a CGI chimp to play him in a big-budget biopic, but it's still willfully perverse.
Last year saw the release of Better Man, the aforementioned Robbie Williams biopic. The movie was a catastrophic commercial failure all over the world, even in the UK. Since its release, however, many viewers, including me, have caught up on Better Man and come to realize that it fucking rules. Very few pop-star biopics have its level of inventive energy. There's also a whole lot of energy on "Rocket," the lead single from Williams forthcoming LP Britpop. It's a charged-up pop-punk snorter with some serious Ramones/Undertones vibes, and it's got guitar from the legendary Black Sabbath axe-wrecker Tony Iommi. We're looking at a statement.
On Instagram, Robbie Williams says that Britpop is "the album that I wanted to write and release after I left Take That in 1995," at the peak Britpop moment. He says that it includes contributions from some of his heroes. Gotta say: great cover art. We don't have any further information on Britpop yet, but you can find the impressive "Rocket" and Williams' Instagram announcement below.
