Rudebox - Robbie Williams

Joseph Smith | 3 January 2007

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It is hardly a profound insight to point out that Robbie Williams is ridiculously self-obsessed. Still, at least it gives him something to sing about.

In fact, singing about himself is something the hugely successful British pop star has done repeatedly and sold 50million albums in the process. One of Williams’ earlier albums, The Ego Has Landed showed the former boy band member was comfortable embracing his highly inflated opinion of himself and using it as a marketing tool.

With the release of album ten, Rudebox, Williams has returned to a musical sound that predates his own era of recording history – the electronica of the 1980s. While Williams is treading new musical ground – for him, anyway – he is retreading similar areas lyrically. Williams primarily sings about himself and to a lesser extent, the music industry and its prevailing culture.

Robbie goes retro

Musically, Williams has gone to a similar place as Madonna did on her latest album Confessions on a Dance Floor by embracing a retro sound. On lead single, Rudebox Williams critiques aspects of modern youth street culture. The rhymes are very creative, occasionally crude and probably incomprehensible to anyone but youth with a working knowledge of street culture.

In Viva Life on Mars Williams quotes from popular Brit pop songs from the 80s like George Michael’s I Want Your Sex and The Pet Shop Boys’ West End Girls.

‘Love is natural love is good
Not everybody does it but everybody should.
With them and us we’ve made a mess
till they decide which god is best.
Free yourself from liberation from lake Geneva to the Freeland station’.

Williams’ throwaway line about the free market choice we have in selecting a god exposes Williams’ ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude for anything that looks like organised religion. Williams showed a similar disdain for Christianity in Sin Sin Sin on his previous album Intensive Care where he implies that a one night stand is ‘what Jesus would do’.

Style over substance

Madonna (the pop star, not the mother of Jesus) is the subject matter of She’s Madonna which is basically Williams’ justification for cheating on his girlfriend because “face it she’s Madonna, no man on earth would say that he don’t want her”.

Sadly, Williams’ rationale glorifies style over substance. It’s a rationale which explains why a person like Paris Hilton is currently the western world’s most adored woman. It’s a worldview that commends people who exploit their sexual identity for gain.

For the Christian it can be hard to escape this kind of thinking. However, commitment to relationships, especially marriage, is a clear command of God. Jesus Christ taught marital fidelity as the expectation, not the recommendation, for married Christians.

In Good Doctor, Williams lampoons his former addiction to drugs. Though he has reportedly been clean for over six years, Williams isn’t afraid to address his addictive personality as he (albeit ironically) celebrates prescription drug abuse.

And this is precisely Williams’ recurring method. He holds up his flaws – which is commendable in a world of manufactured pop stars – yet he celebrates these flaws without talking about the remedy or potential for change.

It’s like the kid who is so proud about the blood gushing from his injured knee after a fall that he never bothers to patch it up.

God wants humanity to recognise their faults. This is, after all, the first step to the remorse that leads to repentance then healing. But if we just spend time laughing at how messed up we are, even lamenting it, but ultimately exploit it for cash or attention, then it ends up being a fruitless and ultimately destructive exercise.

Robbie’s revelations

Williams brings the album to a near close with his two most personal tracks, The 80s and The 90s.

In The 80s Williams mentions his ‘Auntie Joan died of cancer, God didn’t have an answer’. For Williams, God is impotent if he is present at all.

Williams reveals the hurt caused to him from within his family and from authority figures: ‘School was a laugh, they didn’t have ADD, thick was the term they used for me’. This hurt seems to drive Williams’ need to prove himself and build his large ego.

In The 90s Williams chronicles the process of joining boy band Take That, the ensuing in-fighting and his subsequent quitting before launching his solo career.

‘I can’t be bothered, cuz I’m lazy
I hate those that hate me
I cant forgive and it’s crazy, baby’

I admit, Williams’ autobiographical candour is impressive. However, his inability to forgive or to be proactive in changing his ways harshly contrasts his life from the one that Jesus lived. It’s far from the life of love, repentance and forgiveness that God has called each of us to embrace.

Williams’ Rudebox is a well-produced embrace of old musical forms. Unfortunately, his lyrics celebrate his own old ways and give little sense of hope for the future. Maybe Williams should follow his own advice, recognise God’s existence and live by the lyrics from one of his older songs, “Lord, I’m doing all I can to be a better man.”