New Robbie album in "might not be brilliant" shock

Is Robbie Williams a "love him or hate him" kind of popstar? Lots of people seem to think he is.

True to form, I neither love him nor hate him: I like him a reasonable amount. He's charismatic, intelligent, interesting and genuine, and yes he's done some rubbish songs and yes he's acted like a berk on more than one occasion. But don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes - haven't we all done similar things in our time? Remember the time my seventh studio album received mixed reviews and I took lots of drugs and moved to LA? No...?

The advent of a new Robbie album is an exciting and wondrous thing. I've listened to Reality Killed the Video Star a couple of times now, so here's my knee-jerk reaction review.

Song you don't need to pause if you're going out to make a cuppa: Superblind (which, disappointingly, is not about a venetian blind that can fly).

Song that's better on the album than on its own: You Know Me (the waltz).

Song that is hopefully a "grower", otherwise there really is no hope for this album or the future of pop: Blasphemy, which was co-written by Guy Chambers - yes, THE Guy Chambers. I was really excited about this song before I heard it.

Likely singles: He keeps churning out Morning Sun and Starstruck on the telly, so let's presume these ones have a chance at being future top ten hits.

Songs that 'tip the nod' to Rudebox without being very good: Last Days of Disco, and Difficult for Weirdos.

Song you wouldn't want to pop up on your car stereo unexpectedly while driving home from a funeral: Deceptacon.

There are other songs too. As far as I can tell, this album doesn't contain anything as good as Supreme or No Regrets.

So in summary, it might not be very good. But then, it might be very good - it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that will wear thin too quickly.

I don't see it as a 'moving on' kind of album though. After the knock-back Robbie suffered with those Rudebox reviews - and incidentally, there was a lot of good stuff on Rudebox - he seems to have gone back to the old 'cheeky Robbie pop' image, without learning much from the progress he seemed to be making three years ago. Those three years have seen some big changes in pop, so Robbie's in danger of disappearing quite rapidly backwards by standing still, in the way that he would do if he were to stand on a moving treadmill (and that would be quite funny to the casual observer, but if you were Robbie's mum or one of his fans it would look really quite tragic and horrible and you'd worry that he might have hurt his knee).

Mind you, I'll probably change my mind in a week.

By the way, the worst lyric I've noticed so far is "what's so great about the great depression? Was it a blast for you? Cos it's blasphemy" from Blasphemy. But it wouldn't be a Robbie album without some tragically inept wordplay. He is my inspiration.