CHEESE'N CRACKERS

The first 'proper' Robbie Williams album in almost a decade, 'Britpop' is an unabashed joyride, writes Roisin O'Connor

- Roisin O'Connor

Robbie Williams has been having a very public reckoning with his past, of late. There was Better Man, the Oscar-nominated 2024 film that depicted the former Take That member as a CGI chimp (inspired by his view of himself as a performing monkey). Then came a moving four-part Netflix documentary, in which he reflected on his early taste of fame, aged 16, in one of the world's biggest boybands, and how that led him down a dark path of drug addiction and depression. Narrated largely from the cosy safety of a goose-down duvet, Williams offered a poignant look at the bloke behind all the bravado. Yet even as he reminded us of why we fell in love with him in the first place - bellowed "Angel" choruses and all - there was an album he felt he never got to make, one he would like to have released in the immediate aftermath of his Take That departure in pursuit of solo stardom.