FEATURE:
Let Me Entertain You
Robbie Williams' Life Thru a Lens at Twenty-Five
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I am a bit surprised…
that there has not really been a feature or documentary produced that explores and looks inside Robbie Williams’ debut solo album, Life Thru a Lens. It turns twenty-five on 29th September. Not only is it a great and very underrated album. It is one of the most anticipated solo albums of the 1990s. There is so much history and expectation associated with Life Thru a Lens. This was Williams' first solo album following his departure from Take That. He left Take That in 1995. It was clear that he would embark on music at some point down the line. When I was young and heard the news, I thought he might join another group. Perhaps the most likely member of Take That to go solo (even ahead of Gary Barlow), I suppose a solo Williams album was the best option. More influenced by Britpop and other genres, Life Thru a Lens is a more current (for the time) and more mature and edgier sound compared to that of Take That. In spite of the fact that there was this spotlight and media glare his way before the album’s release – the album cover gives you an idea of Williams’ actual day-to-day life! -, there is so much confidence from him throughout. Co-writing all tracks (most with his writing partner, Guy Chambers), I think Life Thru a Lens has not gained the sort of stature it deserves. There are a couple of filler tracks, but its biggest and best numbers can match almost anything from the 1990s.
Even though the album's first three singles, Old Before I Die, Lazy Days and South of the Border were fairly successful, the fourth single, Angels, shot Williams to international fame. Reaching number four, it has sold over one million copies in the U.K. and is his biggest-selling single to date. The standout final single, Let Me Entertain You, reached number three. I think this song is the most memorable from Life Thru a Lens, and is it shows Williams’ bravado, showmanship, and playfulness in spades! A relatively slow chart success, Life Thru a Lens debuted at number eleven in the U.K. Following Angels’ success, Life Thru a Lens reached number one in April 1998. His sophomore album, 1998’s I've Been Expecting You, did get to number one and has sold much more (than Life Thru a Lens). If I've Been Expecting You is a stronger album, Life Thru a Lens is important. It was Robbie Williams’ debut solo album, and it was the start of a long career. I think Williams’ first two albums are his very best. Even Life Thru a Lens’ deeper cuts are interesting and worthy of listening.
As I said, I am surprised there aren’t long articles that tell the story of Life Thru a Lens. The debut solo artist from a former member of the biggest boyband of their generation, their most popular member was making his first big musical move since leaving the group in 1995. I think some of the mixed and negative reviews were based around people not liking Robbie Williams or lumping him in with Take That and their feelings for them. Taken a separate work, Life Thru a Lens is superb and filled with great singles and some amazing deeper cuts. The last few tracks are not the best on the album, but there is more than enough gold to keep you entertained and hooked prior to these songs. If some snobbier sources kicked Williams and felt his debut offered nothing, many others have viewed Life Thru a Lens as a very strong and accomplished debut from one of Pop music’s all-time great artists. This is what NME wrote in 1997:
“RARE IS the pop star who finds his true vocation. That's because they're a bunch of moaning, jealous malcontents who always want what everyone else has got. And that's why they're famous in the first place. All pop stars want to be credible rock stars. All credible rock bands secretly want to sell loads of records and shag teenagers. And never the twain shall meet.
Robbie Williams would belong to the former category, were it not for the fact that his blood has always been coloured with a devil-may-care rock'n'roll spirit, and squeezing him into a clean-living pearly-toothed pop product like Take That was like making Paul Gascoigne captain of the Saint Pious The Chaste Church XI. In Take That, he always had the best voice, the best dancey bits, the best looks and, shockingly enough, a personality. Obviously it couldn't last.
And so it came to pass that, while Gary Barlow tried to be Britain's answer to Billy Joel (That answer, by the way Gary, is, 'No thanks you bland tedious schlock merchant') Robbie Williams, as anyone who follows the gossip columns will know, became a glorious celebrity fool. A dribbling, drinking, grinning gibbon who got passed from shoulder to shoulder at parties but was still a good laugh in small doses and probably just wanted to be loved at the end of the day. Contrary to popular belief, this is a perfectly respectable way of behaving for a pop star. You'd never find the '90s breed of cool, calculating copywriters risking making fools of themselves in public, and that is their problem. Robbie, meanwhile, can't help it. If Liam is mad for it, Robbie is insane for it.
That much we know. What hasn't been evident until recently is that Robbie knows all the above only too well. And still can't help it. This new-found self-consciousness, though, makes for a solo album that is often smart, sharp and prickling with personality far beyond the call of teenpop duty.
Sure, he's got a bunch of songwriters and musos in to do the tunesmithing donkey work, but he's moulded them in his own image. I mean, 'Old Before I Die' could be his theme tune. Meanwhile, the title track is a genuinely pithy scattershot at all the phoney sloaney wankers he sees ligging around him, featuring such top lines as, "Just because I ain't double-barrelled doesn't mean I haven't travelled well" and, of course, "Her clothes are very kitsch just because her Daddy's rich." The Pulitzer Prize may be some way off, but these are the kind of dumb-smart lyrics Blur were always a little bit too we-are-clever to write. Alternatively, there's just the disarmingly honest likes of 'Clean' or 'One Of God's Better People'.
Musically, he just about passes his self-imposed credibility exam, with a range of breezy guitar pop (see the singles) and piano ballads expanding to the dilute-to-punk buzz of the title track and loose-limbed Black Grape flavours of 'Ego A Go Go'.
Most importantly, though, there are enough tunes, enough point and enough style here to keep this crazy fool in rehab fees for a while yet. Take That and... er, party a bit more.
7/10”.
I am going to round up in a minute. Before then, I want to quote BBC’s review. They actually provide history and background to Life Thru a Lens, in addition to saying how Williams’ sound would shift between his debut and 1998’s I’ve Been Expecting You:
“Robbie Williams had a 1995 to never forget, assuming he was ever in a state capable of recording the events that passed and, ultimately, defined the artist he soon became.
After drifting away from the other four members of all-conquering boyband Take That – his ideas were apparently overlooked by creative spearhead Gary Barlow, and his drug consumption threatened to see him excluded from the group before a mutual decision was finally made and he left relatively amicably – Williams wound up at Glastonbury, and was pap-snapped partying with members of the equally massive Oasis. Gossip columns flew into overdrive, and assumptions that a solo career beckoned were verified quickly enough when, the very next summer, Williams’ take on George Michael’s Freedom charted just a place shy of the top spot – that’s 26 places higher than the 1990 original.
That track didn’t make it onto Williams’ debut album of 1997, a collection of co-writes with Guy Chambers that, while mostly unremarkable when assessed as standalone arrangements, comprise the solid foundations for all that followed: seven further solo albums (2009’s Reality Killed the Video Star marks his return after three years out of the spotlight), several number one singles, more BRIT awards than any other artist, and total sales worldwide of over 55 million.
No single from Life Thru a Lens topped the singles chart in the UK, but the album certainly trumped all comers in its category, buoyed by both the celebrity status of its (co) maker and the catchy nature of whistle-along tunes like Lazy Days, Old Before I Die and the here-I-am-world-stop-me-if-you-can excessiveness of Let Me Entertain You, a song that’s less about collaborative enjoyment of music between artist and audience, and more about Williams puffing out his chest and adopting a swagger that would see him through until the comparatively melancholic overtones of second album, I’ve Been Expecting You”.
On 29th September, we mark twenty-five years of Robbie Williams’ Life Thru a Lens. Take That disbanded in 1996. The group reformed, and Williams briefly re-joined Take That (his first album back with them was 2010’s Progress). Williams and Guy Chambers’ writing partnership is one of the most successful in modern British Pop. It all started with Life Thru a Lens. If Williams did deliver a stronger album in the form of I’ve Been Expecting You, 1997’s Life Thru a Lens is…
A wonderful introduction.