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Well done Robbie!

Well done Robbie! Once dismissed by Noel Gallagher as being “The fat dancer out of Take That”, Mr Williams is right now riding a wave of (wait for it)… credibility. Really, he is. While Oasis, by comparison, lumber ever onwards like a cocaine-fuelled steamroller that flattens rock music into bland conformity, Robbie is looking worryingly poised on the razor-sharp cutting edge of pop. Let’s take a look at the evidence:

1. His last single. “Sin Sin Sin” was perhaps “the greatest / most amusing / most uplifting pop song of the year / decade / month” (delete as appropriate). Choose the superlative yourself – it really was a great song. With its driving electro-bassline and genuinely touching lyrics, this was a real triumph for a man who, let’s be honest, has about as much musical talent as Paris Hilton. It also included the lyrics “Just relax, that’s what Jesus would do”, which validates the whole song, in my eyes.

2. His recent single, “Rudebox” is well worth a listen. It doesn’t scale the triumphant heights of “Sin Sin Sin”, but it’s a lot funnier. All music journalists want to coin a genre of music, and so I’m going to stake my claim by describing the song as ‘slo-mo-electro’ – a plodding, bass-heavy groover full of early-80s effects. Most of the song is made up of Robbie attempting to rap, which is funny enough in itself, but thankfully he’s realised that the only way a middle-aged white man can rap without looking ridiculous (take note, Fizz), is to do it with a good helping of irony. Halfway through the song, Robbie sounds like he’s genuinely taking the piss, hardly bothering to form the words properly. More importantly, in the course of the song, he manages to lampoon Michael Jackson (‘Jackson is a mess’), name-checks a well-known and painfully unfashionable discount store (the kind that you get your mum to shop at for you, for fear of being seen with the carrier bags), calls somebody a “fuck-face” (don’t ask), and implores listeners to “dance like they won the Special Olympics”. Funny stuff. Snoop Dogg it is not.

3. The remixes. I don’t know how he’s done it, but DJs are currently desperately tracking down a limited edition remix of Robbie’s single, which is so rare that it basically sold out on the day it was released. The very idea of serious dance music collectors running after a Robbie Williams record is laughable – but that’s exactly what has happened. The remixes are actually a damn sight better than the record itself, mostly because they cut out the vocals almost in their entirety, and thus render the track acceptable for the kind of discerning clubber who wouldn’t usually dance to Robbie even if a gun was pointed at his family and pets. Even more surprisingly, three spectacularly cool producers have remixed the track – Soul Mekanik, Chicken Lips and Riton. I know, I know, you’ve never heard of them, but that’s precisely the point – they’re that cool!

4. The British newspaper the Sun called Rudebox “The worst song ever.” And anything The Sun hates is automatically good, because it’s written by arrogant morons who make a living by plastering their meaningless opinions into the faces of Britain ’s poor and barely-literate. Ever heard the expression “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”? Well that’s basically how it works with the Sun newspaper. I’ve found myself distinctly warming to paedophiles, serial killers and Robbie Williams since the Sun decided they were all ‘bad people’. Well done Robbie!

I could go on – there’s definitely a degree paper to be done on Robbie Williams. It’s only a matter of time before Harvard starts to run a paper on “Robbie Williams, semiotic theory and identity in the twenty-first century.” The man’s life is clearly a disaster. He’s a helpless, drug-addicted (alleged) closet homosexual (check the internet for the rumours about him and George Michael’s boyfriend) who just happens to have releases a sizeable string of life-affirming records. He’s everything that we deserve. Cooler than Oasis? I think so. Well done Robbie!