Robbie Williams thought that song sucked

The co-writer and producer of the songs of Robbie WilliamsGuy Chambers speaking to the British magazine NME he explained how the singer was not at all convinced of the goodness of “Rock DJ”a song he thought was “cheesy as hell.”

The now 50-year-old English musician was very wrong in fact about the song, included in his third solo album released in 2000 “Sing When You're Winning” (read the review here), reached number one in the sales charts in Great Britain.

Chambers explains that it was hard work to convince him that the song had the potential to make it big.

As Guy Chambers recalls that time: “We were trying to write a song that could be played at a wedding. We wanted the lyrics to be fun, thought-provoking, but he thought they were damn cheesy. He didn't like them. So I had to keep telling him, 'I know I don't you like it, but I think it could work.’ He was very self-critical; incredibly self-critical.”

Thinking about it now, it's incredible how Robbie had doubts even about one of his most beloved hits,
“Feel”
. Doubts about the song included in the 2002 album
“Escapology”
(
read the review here
) stemmed from the fact that he thought the music was too sad to include lyrics, given his mental state at the time. “He was going through a real crisis when he wrote “Feel”. He found the music sad and, because he's a manic depressive, he didn't want to write about it. In the end, he did. Thank God he did and let it out how he really felt At that moment, he was alone and needed to fill this huge hole in his life with love.”

Guy Chambers
also told a story linked to another of the great successes of
Robbie Williams
,
“Angels”
. Here the protagonist is Guy himself who almost canceled the writing session for the song because he had a terrible sinus infection. It was his mother who convinced him to go to the studio, and we know the rest.

Ask him about the success of
“Angels”
,
Guy Chambers
gives his thoughts on this: “It's one of Robbie's few songs that isn't very tied to his life. It's a universal song. A lot of his lyrics aren't very personal and contain a lot of his humor. Bizarre would be the word I would use . 'Angels' is not like that. 'Angels' is a spiritual song. It's kind of an anthem. So, I think that's why. We actually should have written more that way, but we didn't.”