MANILA, Philippines - Robbie Williams has just released Reality Killed The Video Star written in his home studio in Los Angeles and recorded in London. Among those who have collaborated on the songwriting are Kelvin Andrews and Danny Spencer, Brandon Christy, Richard Spencer and Scott Rudin, Chaz Jankel, Guy Chambers and Fil Eisler. The album is produced by the legendary Trevor Horn. “He’s added something to the record that I haven’t had on previous records — his genius,” Robbie says. “I just think it sounds big — track after track.”
Its stylistic range is broad and exuberant, as Robbie’s albums have been from the first. “I have a wide range of tastes,” he says. “I wasn’t aware that you couldn’t do that, or that you might not be able to. And with every case there’s an exception to the rule, and I seem to have been that for a while. And I quite like being an exception to the rule — to any rule going.”
The songs’ tone and topics veer widely as well, from the apocalyptic conspiracy-laced first single Bodies (“It’s the modern middle ages,” he sings) to a hymn for one fallen (Morning Sun); from today’s fame epidemic (Starstruck) to, in Won’t Do That To You, the most traditional subject of all: “My very first love song.” Some he’s still working out for himself — “a load of songs that I sing happen to me in the future,” he observes — and some come from finally having a little time to reflect: “Spending a bit of time on the planet, and notching up a few years between the start of my career and now, it’s kind of me looking back and going, ‘Where did all that time go? What happened?’ I still feel 23. Nothing’s changed. Everything’s changed.”
Reality Killed The Video Star featuring the carrier single Bodies is released locally under PolyEast Records.