Everyone is cheering about Williams’ Beatles record with BRITPOP. But one album represents a painful dent in his discography.
With his new studio album BRITPOP, Robbie Williams has made history in the UK: 16 of his albums have made it to number 1 in the UK album charts – the Beatles have 15. He is officially above the most sacred reference in pop history and is now hard to catch as a solo act when it comes to number one albums.
Just at the moment when everyone is talking about his unprecedented number one series, there is a chapter in his discography that doesn’t really fit into the winning narrative: REALITY KILLED THE VIDEO STAR.
REALITY KILLED THE VIDEO STAR: The one flaw
His 2009 album, with the lead single “Bodies”, is to date Robbie Williams’ only studio album not to reach number 1 in the UK. And that despite the fact that the numbers were anything but disappointing: over 85,000 copies sold on the first day, 238,000 in the first week – a strong comeback after the flop with the hip hop and dance experiments of RUDEBOX in 2006.
In the end, only around 1,500 units were missing to jump to the top; He was beaten by the now forgotten boy band JLS with their self-titled debut – a gap of less than one percent. This one album spoils his perfect album record to this day.
Studio vs. Live: Why LIVE AT KNEBWORTH isn’t counted
LIVE AT KNEBWORTH also didn’t make it to number 1 in 2003 (but came second), but falls into a different category in Robbie’s personal record. As a live album, it is not counted when asked about his studio number one albums and therefore remains more of a footnote than a real flaw. So in the pure studio ranking there is only one outlier: REALITY KILLED THE VIDEO STAR – the album that prevents Williams from having a flawless series of number one studio albums.
Postponed because of Taylor Swift
So that BRITPOP could pave the way for this 16th number one album, the release date was precisely calculated. The release was originally scheduled for October, but then it became apparent that Taylor Swift would be releasing a new album in the same period – a chart clash that Williams simply wasn’t interested in. At a concert in London in October, he explained to an audience why BRITPOP had actually been pushed back. He said: “We all act like this has nothing to do with Taylor Swift, but of course it has to do with that. You just can’t compete against her.”
“I want that 16th number one album”
Williams also made it clear that evening in London that his own ambition was behind the postponement. He said: “I could say it had other reasons, but that would be a lie. It’s totally selfish – I want that 16th number one album. He also talked about how he struggled with making the fans wait longer and then came to the conclusion that you couldn’t let an opportunity like that go to waste. Something like this: “At first I thought: ‘Damn, now I’m going to make everyone wait forever.’ But then I thought, ‘Fuck it. How often in your life do you get the opportunity to have more number one albums than anyone else in this country?'”
Just next to it is also over
Today Robbie Williams has exactly what he said that evening in London: 16 number one albums, more than the Beatles. The irony still remains: If REALITY KILLED THE VIDEO STAR had collected these missing 1,500 sales in 2009, the record would probably have been history long ago without any strategic shifts. So his career tells a more exciting story: a superstar who times releases so that he avoids Taylor Swift in order to overtake the Beatles – and at the same time an artist whose almost perfect discography has a small but very human dent in a single, narrowly lost chart race.
