19. Candy (2012)
Most of Williams’ work has improved with age – the quality of his big hits is easier to appreciate now that they’re not ubiquitous – but Candy, co-written with Gary Barlow, remains a guilty pleasure: it’s almost willfully and insanely catchy. As he pops a piece of unrepentant gum, he hits every box.
18. Tripping (2005)
Tripping looks awful on paper: the lyrics include a quote commonly misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi, the sound is influenced by reggae – or at least the reggae from the Clash of the early 80s. It’s melodically subtle and impressive – at least by Williams’ individual standards – but strangely it works.
17. Motherfucker (2016)
Long before mental health became a hot topic in pop music, Williams was opening up about his struggles in song. Motherfucker is the most striking: addressing his children, he describes generations of diseases they may inherit: “I’d like to sing a song that says you’ll be fine, but… I’d be lying.”
16. Morning Sun (2009)
Williams then proceeded to mock the Trevor Horn-produced Reality Killed the Video Star as “half-baked” and dub it Let Me Underwhelm You, but its opening track is great. Great melody, grand orchestration, lyrics that – usually – worry about reviews and star ratings and Williams’ ambition: “All I wanted was the world.”
15. Let Love Be Your Energy (2000)
An infinitely more compelling take on Beatle-influenced alt-rock than the pale Oasis-isms of Old Before I Die and Lazy Days, 1997’s Let Love Be Your Energy confidently emanates from the speakers, a killer wall-to-wall song with distorted guitars. layout decorated with nods to I Am the Walrus and Penny Lane.
14. She’s Madonna (2006)
It would be nice to argue in retrospect that Rudebox – the album that ended Williams’ empire phase – is a lost left-field pop masterpiece, but it still sounds muddled and fragmented: the product of an artist who wants to do something different but hasn’t accomplish what. Still, the good tracks are great, if not least this witty Kraftwerk-y Pet Shop Boys collaboration.
13. Go Gentle (2013)
Amidst the camp banter and Great American Songbook standards on Swings Both Ways lurked Go Gentle, a beautifully understated daughter’s rocker, sounding influenced not by the swing era but by the sound of grown-up, late-decade LA pop 60’s – Harry Nilsson, Jimmy Webb -Glenn Campbell era.
12. Rock DJ (2000)
You get the sense that Williams, an Ian Dury fan, saw Rock DJ as an homage to the Blockheads’ disco-influenced hits: here, backing comes from Barry White’s mid-tempo It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me, while the rhythm of the lyrics is sonically inspired by Blockheads’ Reasons to Be Cheerful (Part 3). Robbie Williams performs in Hong Kong in 2001. Photo: Kin Cheung/Reuters
11. Feel (2002)
The sound of a man on top of the world – the companion album Escapology went platinum in more than 14 countries – protesting “I’m not sure I understand the role I’ve been given”, the decidedly downbeat lyrics rubbing against the soaring, uplifting melody help of the orchestra.
10. She’s the One (1998)
“She nailed my pig and killed it, but she gave me enough bacon to last me four years,” said World Party’s Karl Wallinger after Williams covered the track on his 1997 album. It’s a great song, but the least fragile, less Beatles interpretation of Williams turned it into the kind of single that goes platinum.
9. Let Me Entertain You (1997)
Long established as Williams’ opening theme song, it’s easy to overlook the fact that Let Me Entertain You’s lyrics aren’t about the singer’s desperation for an audience: it’s a genuinely witty draft of a man desperately trying to talk to someone. bed. Weird but true fact: it started life as, above all else, a drum bass track.
8. No Regrets (1998)
Williams spent his early solo career spitting on his former Take That bandmates in interviews, but while his musical summation of their split has the odd barbed line, his overall tone isn’t so much bitter as, well, regretful: it sounds like a sigh, haunted by what might have been.
7. Lovelight (2006)
A pinnacle of Rudebox chaos, the Mark Ronson-produced Lovelight isn’t just a fantastic song, it’s a strangely prescient one. Sixteen years on, its falsetto-vocals and daft punk mix of electronics with ultra-smooth yacht-rock-y disco sounds a lot now: honestly, if Harry Styles released it tomorrow, we’d never hear the end of it.
6. Supreme (2000)
A prime testament to how good the Robbie Williams/Guy Chambers songwriting team were at their best, Supreme has a gorgeous chanson-inspired melody. The way it teases a passing resemblance to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive in the lyrics before finally letting loose with a string sample from the 1979 hit is inspired.
5. Angels (1997)
Angels has been so ubiquitous for so long that it’s almost impossible for someone of a certain age to listen to it objectively: in the late ’90s and ’00s, it wasn’t so much a song as an unavoidable fact of everyday life. Most pop songwriters would kill to find something with that kind of impact and longevity. Robbie Williams performs Angels at a Soccer Aid for Unicef event at the London Stadium in June. Photo: Kieran McManus/Rex/Shutterstock
4. Advertising Space (2005)
Intensive Care, Williams’ first album without Chambers, is highly underrated. Written by ’80s pop star-turned-cult folk-rocker Stephen Duffy, Advertising Space is as good a ballad as anything the singer has recorded: a moving, epic meditation on Elvis’ death and the tense relationship between art and commerce.
3. Children (2000)
If Williams had a penchant for complex, jaded examinations of his career and soul, he was also capable of crafting downright straight-laced pop: the utterly fantastic Kids features a monster chorus, a guest appearance from Kylie and lyrics he played gleeful at the media’s obsession with Williams’ sexuality.
2. Strong (1998)
In his prime, Williams was often derided as a wannabe entertainer, which now seems crazy: here was a huge British star who was charismatic, outspoken, confrontational, his work peppered with oddly meta hits. “This is real ’cause I feel fake,” says Strong, a song about vulnerability and self-doubt that sounds ready to take the world by storm.
1. Come Undone (2002)
“My main talent is turning trauma into something that feels like showbizzy,” Williams told the Guardian in 2016: a perfect summary of Come Undone. Musically, it’s a beautifully shot example of a 00s power ballad, gentle piano verses and acoustic guitar soaring into a sprawling, air-stirring chorus. Lyrically, it’s something else. Come Undone pulls, exploring Williams’ success in terms that are alternately defiant – “fuck you all” – and with such loathing that it could have come from the pen of Kurt Cobain: he describes himself variously as “full of shit ” corporate suit”, “whore” and “scum” and informs his audience that “if I stopped lying I would just let you down”. A depiction of the unraveling of fame tailor-made for success – it made the Top 5 – it’s an excellent song.
