I hurt, but it's worth it - I guess I deserve it

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

23/01/26 : BRITPOP - Robbie Williams

Blue last week, Robbie this - 2026 is spoiling me. This is our sixth visit with Robbie and I have to admit I'm much more kindly disposed to him than I used to be, but I'm still not convinced this isn't going to a dreadful "I'm still young" effort.

Actually, it's more a bit of mostly pleasing enough nostalgia - Oasis, The Lightning Seeds and quite a few others who I don't remember popped into my mind as I was listening to this. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a great album, but it really could have been far worse. And the normal version is only 38 minutes long, with even the deluxe version coming in at a mere hour (which is almost nothing these days).

We're at our first "#1 with a new entry" of the new year and the rest of the top five are Olivia Dean, Madison Beer (a new entry), Nathan Evans/St Phoenix Band (another new entry) and the Fleetwood Mac best of. And, somewhat unsurprisingly, there are considerably more new entries this week than we've previously seen.

Madison Beer (#3)
I vaguely recognised the name but would never have remembered it was because I saw her at Reading more than a few years ago. I was expecting this to be wishy-washy worrying about boys, but actually there's a bit more to it than that and I found it surprisingly enjoyable - Olivia Rodrigo or Lizzie McAlpine are the closest touchpoints I can give you, although she does come worryingly close to Ariana Grande at times.

Nathan Evans & Saint Phnx (#4)
I knew Nathan Evans was the sea-shanty man and I was hoping this was leaning more to his roots than the dreadful dance-y remix thing. Yeah, it's Celtic country/folk - perfectly serviceable, but all a bit samey for me.

Sleaford Mods (#6)
I'm not a huge fan of this shouty pair, but I have to admit they do what they do better than plenty of others that try to and they also have a (more that slightly twisted) sense of humour.

ASAP Rocky (#8)
I wasn't expecting to like this and I don't, but once again I have to admit there are other worse offerings from the genre out there.

Elles Bailey (#14)
Not a name I recognised, but I really should have because we met her as a new entry a couple of years ago and I liked her - and I liked this one to. She's got a new bluesy voice and a decent enough set of songs.

Kid Kapichi (#71)
Another one I didn't recognise, but "kid" in the name is up there with "lil" for me as a red flag. But this was actually OK - it's kinda Ian Brown-ish slightly psychedelic indie/rock. Quite interesting.

Cavetown (#94)
And another one, but if you're gonna call your album Running With Scissors, I'm at least going in with an open mind. And this is also slightly psychedelic indie/rock, without sounding the slightest bit like Kid Kapichi - also quite interesting.

Ir's an interesting week for re-entries because there's only two and they're both from Harry Styles (#32 and #37) - I have a slight suspicion that might be something to do with the new track he put out (which I found to be very underwhelming on first listen). Last week I said that Blue would be at #61 but I also said it was a complete guess because they could be anywhere - but it turns out I was even wrong with that because they're nowhere. I can't see Robbie suffering the same fate - I reckon he's gonna be somewhere like #23. And this week's Taylor stats are one in the top twenty and six in the entire chart, but Midnights is at #97, so I'm sure that's going to last for long.

Wikipedia tells us this is his fourteenth album (and, obviously, his sixteenth #1 which is a UK album chart record) and has a surprising amount of text with a surprising lack of content, but there are some interesting snippets in there. Some unexpected names pop up on various tracks - Tony Iommi, Gaz Coombes and Gary Barlow is quite the mix. The album was initially planned to be released on 10th October, but they pulled it "to avoid competing with The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift. Williams said: "I could pretend it's not, but it is. It's selfish. I want a 16th No 1 album"" - the new release date was planned to be 6 February, but I'm guessing they decided they had a decent chance this week (and they were right!). Critically, it was actually pretty well received but there's more than a hint of "well, he could have done a lot worse" to quite a few of the comments. Commercially, it's done pretty well in Europe, getting to #2 in Switzerland and #3 in Germany, but I think it's unlikely he's going to break the US with this one.

There's nothing for this album on discogs.com because they brought the release date forward by only releasing things digitally. Part of me feels Robbie needs to be given the album of the week for offering up something that was bearable, but it's certainly not great and there's no danger of me listening to it again. Elles Bailey probably wins the "most likely to be revisited" award and Kip Kapichi and Cavetown win the "interesting, particularly given the level of expectation" award.

16/01/26 - Well, my ears didn't start bleeding