Label: Columbia
Released: 16th January 2026
The most Robbie thing about ‘BRITPOP’ is that it’s simultaneously both an ego project and a pop-up confession booth. Even when he’s strutting about like a primetime version of himself, you can hear the little internal narrator tugging his sleeve, going, ‘Mate, are you sure?’ Big choruses, “everyone sing” contours, but also a running current of that unique flavour of sincerity that arrives dressed as banter.
‘Rocket’, for example, comes in like it’s late for its own headline slot, Tommy Iommi’s presence less “guest spot” than “stamp of approval”. It’s Robbie trying to muscle his way into the lineage of proper stadium rock. He’s attempting to turn Britpop into a vehicle for immortality. Both ridiculous and, in his hands, weirdly plausible.
Where the record works best is when it commits to being a swaggering rush without over-explaining itself. ‘Spies’ sounds like a band trying to play faster than their own competence. ‘Pretty Face’ makes Robbie reject the solo pop monolith as the leader of a fictional group, obsessed with getting the best camera angle, while ‘Cocky’ is a stomper that understands the power of being a bit of a twat when you’ve earned the right to be. It’s all as you expect, and that’s absolutely fine.
And yet, the obvious criticisms land too, because ‘BRITPOP’ is sometimes so busy signalling its references that it risks becoming a spot-the-influence game. When it’s great, it feels like Robbie metabolising the era into his own language. When it’s weaker, it can feel like he’s borrowing someone else’s voice, then taking it back to the shop once done.
The most interesting tension is that Robbie is not a Britpop frontman. Sure, he’s flirted with the aesthetic from his very first solo steps, clad in three stripes with bleached hair and a lager in both hands. But at heart, he’s a pop star who learned to survive by turning personality into architecture. Britpop is meant to look effortless even when it’s engineered, even if the facade is so thin it’s transparent. Robbie’s default setting is engineered, and he’s proud of it. That’s why the album’s best moments aren’t the ones where he disappears into the sound, but the ones where he bends it around his own self-mythology.
‘Morrissey’ is a perfect example. On paper, it’s an eyebrow-raiser, if only because it’s titled after a man who has turned out to be a birrova plonker in a way Robbie hopefully never could. In practice, it’s a projection, a pop star seeking a funhouse reflection of outsiderdom, mischief, persecution, and self-created legend. The Barlow link (he’s a co-writer and backing vocalist, ‘FYI’) adds another layer, too, because it quietly drags Robbie’s own history back into the frame. Even when he’s wearing Britpop drag, he can’t resist writing the subtext large. His life thru a lens, if you will.
The ballads are where ‘BRITPOP’ risks losing momentum. ‘Human’ is positioned as the big emotional exhale, and it’s not that it’s bad – it’s that the record’s whole appeal is its forward motion. Slow it down, and you start noticing the joins.
Then there’s the closer. The album effectively bookends itself, ‘Pocket Rocket’ arriving as a tender reprise, softening the whole experience into something approaching a resolution. It’s a smart move. It reframes the project not as “look what I can do” but “this is what I wanted”, turning the grand gesture into something disarmingly human by the end.
Will ‘BRITPOP’ be remembered as a major late-career statement? Probably not. But that’s not quite the point. This is Robbie Williams doing what he’s always done best: building a world where cringe and ambition can coexist, where the joke and the wound share the same line. It’s messy, it’s self-aware, it’s occasionally a bit too on-the-nose, and it’s often a lot of fun.
A record brought forward like this can feel like a scramble. ‘BRITPOP’ doesn’t. It feels like a man pressing ‘deploy’ because he can’t stand to wait any longer to see if the myth still works. It does. Not perfectly. But more than enough for Rob to keep on being Rob.
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