Robbie and Morrissey: the difficult job of remaining (Brit)pop

Artists who are polemical or angry with the mechanisms of today’s music: there are those who try to update themselves by engaging in (unlikely) dances on TikTok, those who publish content in bursts on social media, those who pepper albums and singles with duets/featuring with younger colleagues. There are those who appear clearly disoriented by the functioning of the charts and the music media and cannot understand that they are no longer a star like they were 20 years ago, while there are Gen Z artists who are preparing for their first album.
Then there’s Robbie Williams: instead of dying his hair and pretending to still be in the 90s, he uses his space not only to make music, but to talk about the flaws of a profession that he couldn’t do 30 years ago.

“Britpop”, the new album released – more or less – by surprise last week, is just the culmination of an interesting journey. And it is even more interesting that one of the best songs on the album was written with his old partner Gary Barlow and is dedicated to Morrissey, the anti-star par excellence. The one for which Smiths fans forgive (almost) everything: the concerts canceled at the last minute for no real reason, the constant arguments with record companies that led to albums being announced that were never released, the questionable political positions. A star perpetually pissed off at the world.

Instead, in recent years Robbie has become transparent in his fragility: a docuseries for Netflix that told his story between light and shadow, a biopic in which he represented himself as a trained monkey, an Instagram profile in which he (metaphorically) lays himself bare. And then an album that is admittedly “what I wanted to do when I left Take That”. Had he done so then, it would have been a disaster: his exit from the boy band was an international drama and his first solo moves were greeted with suspicion, if not annoyance. Songs like “Angels” took a while to become classics.
Today, however, he can afford to make a record that openly plays with the sounds and imagery of the ’90s, to mention Nirvana and Elastica in the songs, to return to writing with Gary Barlow, to write a song with Gaz Coombes of Supergrass, to play with Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. And to include a song that goes: “Morrissey is talking to me / Talking to me in code”.

“Morrissey” is theoretically a song written from the point of view of a stalker, but the attack immediately shifts the focus: “I like the singer / He’s a little eccentric / He did an interview / I think what he meant was / I’m lost I’m lonely I’m hurt I’m abused / I need love baby, just like you / I’m isolated, deserted and friendless / but the beat goes on, and it feels tremendous”.
It is difficult not to read in these lines something more than a narrative game: there is the perceived loneliness of the adult artist, of the pop star who has experienced success and now has to deal with a system that works differently, with a fragmented attention, with an idea of ​​relevance that passes above all through tools that are difficult to handle if you are not digital natives.
It is no coincidence that the theme returns several times in “Britpop”. In “All my life” he sings “And I know I’ll die, but I’ll never leave the stage”: a phrase that sounds like the other side of “Let me entertain you”, no longer the scream of someone who wants to take everything, but the lucid observation of someone who knows that the stage is a destiny, but also a curse. “My life is based on a true story / One of dreams, chaos and audacity,” the song always goes. The distance with Morrissey – and with many of his peers – becomes evident: not so much in talent or charisma, but in the way of living this new present, where the attention economy of social media counts more than the songs. Morrissey is in constant struggle with the present, Robbie accepts it, metabolises it and transforms it into a story.
To complete the picture, a video appeared on his social networks a few weeks ago in which Robbie “does” Morrissey, to the tune of “Suedehead”: same tone, same posture, same ostentatious superiority. It’s not a bad mockery: it’s imitation as a form of understanding, irony as a survival tool.

Robbie didn’t lose ambition: ultimately the album’s release was postponed to go to number 1 and beat the Beatles’ record. But a musical panorama that seems to ask mature artists to choose between nostalgia and resentment is not just a strategy, it is a story that focuses on self-irony, acceptance and awareness of the role. A form of pop wisdom.

Ah, then “Britpop” is a great album, with songs like they used to – which isn’t obvious, but it’s still the basis of everything. Let’s hope that Morrissey’s new album is up to par too. It will arrive on March 6, the same day as the only Italian date. Then we will forgive him everything again. As long as it doesn’t get cancelled