They poisoned you with compromise, but at what point did you realise?

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

01/01/06 : Intensive Care - Robbie Williams

Having ignored a Robbie best-of yesterday (despite me grudgingly having to admit, under pressure, that there are some decent tracks on there), karma well and truly bit me on the ass today by serving up his second studio album that charted this year.  It can't be worse than Rudebox, can it?

Well, that's certainly an arresting opening couplet - "Here I stand victorious - the only man to make you come".  Thanks for that, Robbie.  But the good news is that it's very much not worse than Rudebox - I'd go as far to say I didn't completely hate it.  In fact, I actually quite liked "Advertising Space" - but don't tell anyone, OK?  The rest of it was just Robbie really - if you like him, then you'll like this.  Which I didn't - but I also didn't detest it.

We're all the way down at #8 in the charts this week on his tenth week of a twenty week run, having debuted at #1 (of course).  He managed another nine random weeks throughout the year but this is probably the first of his "second tier" albums - his star was definitely on the turn at this point.  The top five this week were Eminem, James Blunt, Kelly Clarkson, Hard-fi and Robbie Williams (the best-of, not this one!) and the highest new entry was, quite obviously, Joy Division (#80) - what says "Happy Christmas/New Year!" more than a Joy Division compilation?

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album but there is some utter bollocks on there about how you should press the sigil on Robbie's finger on the album cover and "if enough of us do this the world will most certainly enter a new Golden Age of peace, creativity, and prosperity" - remind me again how that's worked out?  Most of the rest of the entry is basically telling me how wrong I am that his fame was receding.  And, to be fair, it does have a point - it got to #1 in thirteen countries, was #3 in the UK '05 year end chart and sold over six million copies.  Which is more than Escapology sold, so I have to accept that I am indeed wrong.  But he certainly turned things around with his next album...

"Customers also listened to" Take That (who knew?), The Gypsy Queens, The Rasmus, Travis and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.  What an odd combination!  I will be generous in my praise of Robbie's effort though - at no point during its playback did I feel like committing violent crimes.  Yes, it really is way better than Rudebox - and what better way to end(/begin) 2006 than with an album that's considerably better than the second worst album I've had to endure this year (yes, this was even worse).

2006 - Not the best year, but not the worst
08/01/06 - A surprisingly enjoyable, quality album

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