By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | January 17, 2025 |
For those who didn’t know: Robbie Williams is not a chimp. This seems like an obvious point to make but as the major promo push behind the biopic Better Man tries to convince America to embrace its subject via some CGI trickery, it’s a point worth reiterating. Robbie Williams is a human, but making him into a dancing ape hasn’t exactly enticed those across the pond forever sceptical of him to finally become fans.
Better Man has received surprisingly strong reviews given its set-up as a standard musician biopic with a simian twist. A lot of money has been put into trying to make Williams happen in America, but so far the movie has only grossed $11.9 million from a $100 million budget. Americans stayed at home or went to see Wicked again. No matter how hard Williams and his team try to crack the ever-lucrative U.S. market, it simply won’t take. Is it possible that America just doesn’t get him?
Robbie Williams has long been the prime example of a singer who is huge everywhere else but not in America. Like Kylie Minogue, with whom he once duetted on the song ‘Kids’, his many efforts fell flat commercially (although Minogue did break through in recent years, going from LGBTQ+ fandom favourite to dance chart hit thanks to ‘Padam Padam.’) I’ve seen some Americans talk of him as though he’s a local success but that seriously downplays just how big a deal he is across the globe. He’s won 18 Brit Awards, sold 75 million records worldwide, and at one point his concerts were the most attended music events in the UK. A member of the boyband Take That, his solo career far outlasted that group’s prime, and when he rejoined them in 2010 for a new album and tour, it the fastest-selling record of the century at the time. He’s going on a stadium tour this year. His 2002 deal with EMI, worth 80 million, is still one of the biggest deals in music history. He did a duet with Nicole Kidman. Taylor Swift likes him! What more could you want, America?! Alas, it’s never happened. Maybe you Yanks know ‘Millennium’ or were traumatised by the ‘Rock DJ’ video when you saw it on MTV, but it ends there.
And he did try to make it happen. He signed to Capitol Records in 1999. The compilation album The Ego Has Landed, released the same year, was intended as a way to introduce him to the US, but ‘Millennium’, one of his biggest songs at the time, only peaked at number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100.
I really think of Williams as someone so distinctly British that it’s still a surprise to me that he’s a megastar. That cheeky overconfident bloke with self-deprecation to spare, the banter, the early days of his party image… it’s all extremely familiar and relatable. I feel like everyone in the UK knows someone who reminds them of Williams, much like every Scot I know is friends with someone who feels like the twin of Lewis Capaldi. Maybe that wasn’t something the American market wanted at the times he tried to break through, although others came and went before and after and left their stamp on the Billboard charts (like Capaldi.)
The music has long been varied and genre-shifting too. Post-boyband, his debut album, Life Thru a Lens, is heavily Britpop-inspired, which helped to create the image of Williams being ‘grown-up’ and for a more serious audience than excitable teenage girls. But it still had a top-notch party jam designed to be played in every football stadium ever (‘Let Me Entertain You’) and the soppy ballad that your mum is obsessed with (‘Angels.’) The follow-up, I’ve Been Expecting You, was an even bigger hit and probably his strongest overall effort (I think there’s a case to be made that ‘No Regrets’ is his greatest song.) Even the indie snobs like NME loved it. He moved more into dance-pop with Sing When You’re Winning then went full Sinatra with Swing When You’re Winning. The hip-hop inflected Rudebox was a mess but it has its fans. In recent years, he’s cozied into adult contemporary and pop. You could call it trend chasing but it worked, although there’s a case to be made that this lack of a specific musical identity was what drove his lack of connection to America.
I also have a secret to share with you: Williams isn’t a great singer. Okay, this is hardly the scandal of the century but when someone is as huge as Williams it’s not always easy to admit that his vocal talents are lacking. Sure, he has presence but it was his charisma that made people pay attention, not his high notes. Even in Take That, he was seen as a weaker singer compared to Gary Barlow and the like. It’s a running joke that Williams’ concerts are more chat than tunes. My parents saw him live a few years ago and had a great time but admitted that it was clear he wasn’t brilliant at the main reason they were there to see him. Plenty of questionable talents become big in America but it’s tough to sell your worldwide icon as the next big thing when the live performances are iffy and the vocals are thin.
A lot of the love for Williams feels rotted in his ongoing narrative. He went from the perennial boyband bad boy who feuded with Oasis and lived the lad lifestyle to a troubled megastar in need of help to a happy family man who has embraced his status as an elder statesman of British pop. He’s been candid about how the pressure to stay on top led to mental health and substance abuse issues. It’s not that his music has matured. It’s still proudly cocky and unashamedly silly in its lyrics. But all that fun and heavily produced grandeur feels more fitting when you’ve listened to him from ‘Let Me Entertain You’ onward. Frankly, I wonder if Americans view stuff like ‘Rock DJ’ and ‘Angels’ as novelty songs. They do have that tinge, right? I’m not sure the monkey helps either.
The Observer described his 2016 album The Heavy Entertainment Show as ‘Cheek, swagger and schmaltz, the tunes that could only come from Williams make this record entertaining, if a little groan worthy.’ That feels so inimitably Robbie, and so un-American that I feel this is the closest we’ll get to cracking the code. Maybe he’s too cheesy and British for Americans, or his genre shifts and personal narrative didn’t click with transatlantic tastes. If he’s ever to be fully discovered by US audiences, it would be in the Spotify age. Alas, he seems doomed to forever be a pub quiz answer and curiosity from the other side of the special relationship.
If you’re intrigued by Robbie Williams then check out the first few albums then jump around with the singles. The album Escapology is a strong addition to his discography. The work he did with the Pet Shop Boys is a stand-out. Embrace the cheese and let our your inner lad. No chimps necessary.