Evil ol' Netflix made me do it! (It's all good, though)

This might strike you as an odd addition to this blog. Robbie Williams is decidedly mainstream, while most of the music here at One Buck Records is - not. Blame it on Netflix. Luring me in with one of their trailers on the main page, I only wanted to check out the first episode of their new four-part docuseries and - whoosh - watched the whole damn thing. On the one hand, it's a typical Rise and Fall of, with the overnight success as a member of a (boy) band, the even bigger success as a solo artist, paparazzi, paranoia, prescription drugs...then rehab, love, redemption. Nothing much that is unexpected here. But on the other hand, the series does have an interesting narrative device. It mostly consists of vintage footage of the Robster's adventures and misadventures, as commented by a now almost fifty years and somehat wiser Williams, who often discovers this footage for the first time while the documentary crews cameras are on him. So he sees his younger self being a dick, being mortified on stage etc. It's not the most riveting stuff on earth, but it'll keep you watching. 

And of course it did, what music documentaries (or articles) generally do: They bring me to pull out the albums of the artist in question, in this case Williams' first three. And what can I say: They're pretty damn good! It's been years that I listened to them, and I gotta say I didn't remember the consistency of the records. I remembered of course the big hits that were unescapable on the radio, but I gotta say that even the album tracks are for the most part good, further proof that the songwriting team of William and Guy Chambers really had some fantastic alchemy between them for a couple of years (it ran out on Escapology, their fourth and last album together). Robbie could've gone the classic "a couple of hits and a bunch of filler" approach, but these are sturdy pop/rock records all the way through. Not genius music by any stretch of the imagination, but really good pop and rock music, which is nothing to sneer at, either. He can be pretty funny, too. The first verse of "Strong" always makes me smile: "My breath smells of a thousand fags / and when I'm drunk I dance like me dad / I started to dress a bit like him. / And early morning when I wake up / I look like Kiss, but without the Make-up/ and that's a good line to take it to the bridge" (cue: bridge to chorus). Cheeky little rascal. 

So what we have here is a sampler of the best of those first three albums, plus a couple of rarities from the early days, including Williams covering Bowie's "Kooks" and The La's' "There She Goes", plus a pretty funny piss-take on his old boy band's "Back For Good", sung half as a ballad, half as a heavy-metal/screamo song. Relatively funny stuff. The credo for this comp could come from George Michael, who Williams covered for his first single (also present here): Listen without prejudice...