It's hard to know what to expect of Robbie Williams when he shows up in Taipei tonight for a one-off show at the Super Dome in Neihu. But then, his notorious unpredictability is one of his main draws.
Sometimes he hits the stage in tuxedo, sometimes wrapped in a Union Jack, and sometimes he's known to strip down to black briefs with a tiger head embroidered on the crotch that could have been bought at a Taipei night market.
PHOTO COURTESY OF EMI
The 27-year-old bombastic superstar and holder of five British Music Awards is riding a massive wave of popularity in his homeland, where he has stood almost unchallenged for the past several years as the biggest male pop icon -- no small feat in England's ever-shifting pop music culture.
In his home country, and to only a slightly lesser extent around the world, Robbie has fashioned himself into something of a pop phenomenon, even going so far as to occasionally refer to himself with the third-person moniker "The Entertainer." He is also lovingly referred to as the Bad Boy of pop for the pranks he plays (he's given to mooning or flipping the bird at paparazzi) and for his hard-partying ways, which have landed him on numerous covers of England's gossipy music magazines.
Robbie comes to Taipei tonight to promote his latest album Swing When You're Winning which is due to come out next month. In it he takes his music in a new direction, with big-band covers of Frank Sinatra songs, which seems a logical next step in the singer's version of comic megalomania. The album also includes a duet with Nicole Kidman.
Fans in Taipei, however, will likely be screaming their heads off for the hits that have made Robbie a star around the world, like Rock DJ, She's the One, Freedom, Let Me Entertain You and Old Before I Die.
Robbie's singing career started in 1990 when he joined Take That, the band which helped establish the template for 1990s boy bands like Backstreet Boys and N'Sync. The meteoric rise to fame and his personal squabbles with his bandmates took a toll on Robbie, who frequently found solace in the company of the Gallagher brothers from Oasis who were obviously up to no good. Alcohol and drugs, meanwhile, crept their way into Robbie's life.
After tiring of Take That's rigorous tour schedule, syrupy love ballads and especially the pressure from the band to walk the straight and narrow path, Robbie was forced out in 1995 and launched his solo career in 1996. Since then, he's followed the same trajectory set by Take That toward super stardom, though along the way he spent a much-publicized month in rehabilitation for alcohol and cocaine addiction in 1997.
In the five years since going solo, Robbie has released five albums; Life Through a Lens, Angels, I've Been Expecting You, The Ego Has Landed and Sing When You're Winning -- from which were drawn 17 singles. While never wavering from pop, Robbie's solo songs and concert appearances have a distinct "rock" edge that reflects his brash character and mark a clear break from the love songs of Take That. Indeed, Robbie has spent much of his time since the break-up of Take That trying to live down that part of his career.
Sometimes, though, his Take That days come back to haunt him, as in Belgium in 1999 when the audience at an outdoor rock festival turned their backs to the stage and booed. As it turned out, he was billed for the festival as one of the former members of Take That. Robbie has described the event as "humiliating" and "crushing."
For the most part, though, he has seen his fan base grow beyond the hordes of teenage girls that salivated over Take That. His music is more varied and his humor and the trouble he tends to get into appeal mostly to an older audience.
At a recent charity event in Las Vegas, for example, Robbie was caught frolicking with a group of strippers. His manager appeared before media afterward to say Robbie had thought it was "a very rock thing to do," but "was not proud" of his behavior.
He has also had a series of falling outs with Noel Gallagher of Oasis. The two have sparred back and forth in England's music magazines, with Robbie at one point saying, "You can't build a career on a single note ? unless you're Oasis," and Gallagher calling Robbie the "fat dancer from Take That." These episodes have, not surprisingly, helped boost Robbie's career by keeping him in the spotlight at his most outrageous moments.
While Robbie sells out arenas in England in minutes, Taipei fans who have procrastinated on buying tickets can count themselves lucky that plenty remain between NT$1,200 and NT$2,000. Anticipation is high as to whether Robbie will repeat the new album's big-band numbers he played at an Oct. 11 show at London's Royal Albert Hall, or whether he will engage in his better-known stage antics, like stripping. In any event, the show is certain to be one of the campiest spectacles to come through Taipei in recent memory.
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