The new Robbie Williams movie Better Man bills itself as an unconventional music biopic thanks to the idiosyncratic choice to have the central role portrayed by a CGI chimpanzee, but many Americans have found themselves puzzling over a more basic question about the film: “Who is Robbie Williams?”
The British pop star, 50, is one of the most successful recording artists in UK history, with seven number one singles and 14 number one albums to his name. However, he has never achieved the same cultural impact in the United States, where he has failed to crack the Billboard Top 50 with any of his songs (1997’s “Angels”, a cultural phenomenon in the UK, came closest when it reached 53).
In Britain, Williams shot to fame as a member of boy band Take That, who released their debut album Take That & Party in 1992. A series of UK chart-topping albums and singles followed, including March 1995 ballad “Back For Good,” which was also a hit in the US, reaching number seven on the Billboard Hot 100. A few months later, in June, Williams was photographed partying with Oasis at Glastonbury festival and the British tabloids were filled with reports of his burgeoning drug use. Take That delivered him an ultimatum, and Williams decided to leave the group rather than adhering to the requirements of going on a world tour with the boy band.
Williams launched his solo career in 1996, with debut album Life thru a Lens following in 1997. The record was at first a modest success, debuting at number 11 on the charts, but the massive success of “Angels” helped it eventually top the charts five months later. Follow-up I’ve Been Expecting You went straight in at number one in 1998 and went platinum 10 times over.
Williams’s success continued over the next decade. In 2003 he played three huge concerts at Knebworth, which drew over 375,000 people, becoming Britain’s biggest-ever music event at the time. In 2006, he set a Guinness World Record by selling 1.6 million tickets in a single day for his Close Encounters Tour. His fame is not confined to the UK: he is also wildly popular in mainland Europe, particularly Germany, and in Australia.
Despite his apparent international appeal, America never embraced Williams. In his 2023 Netflix docuseries Robbie Williams, the star discussed his failed attempts to “break America” and eventually concluded that in fact his anonymity in the country had proved to be a blessing after he moved to live in Los Angeles in 2001. He recently told an interviewer from Time: “I genuinely think that I don’t know if I’d be here [without it]. It was a very different time, with very different aspects of a sociopathic industry, leaching from you by any means necessary, most of them illegally. And if they weren’t illegal, they should have been. I made a grown-up decision and chose to live in anonymity in North America for the last 25 years, so I can be Bruce Wayne here and Batman everywhere else.”
He admits, though, that he still harbours hopes that Better Man might be the thing that helps him finally become a household name in America, saying: “I think it would be novel and exciting to get to show off for a North American audience on a scale that I’ve not been able to, ever.” Early signs, however, don’t look promising. Despite rave reviews from publications including The Independent, the film brought in just a million dollars on its opening weekend, making it a box office bomb after costing over $110 million to produce.
