- Artist
- Robbie Williams
- Label
- Chrysalis
- Release date
- 23rd October 2006
- Genre
- Pop
If I was a recording artist and I signed a contract that meant I received £80 million quid for making records over a period of time and I produced this album, I like to think that one of my entourage would have the courage to whisper in my ear that I might want to think about giving some of the money back. That or donating a significant chunk of it to a deserving charity.
Rudebox is quite simply a hotchpodge of third rate nonsense, a record that doesn't know what it is, where it's going or what it's trying to say. There's nothing wrong with moving away from the self-referential (and let's face it, tiresome) "woe is me" material that has peppered Robbie's career to date. But if you're going to fire off in another direction at least have a sense of who you are and what you're about. This record, with its cod-rap and duff electronica "beats" is just all over the place.
The lyrics are banal at the best of times. Take the risible title track, a "rap" where your man intones stuff like "Sing a song of semtex/pocket full of Durex/body full of Mandrax/are we gonna have sex/back to the rudebox" to the classic funk anthem Boops, penned by Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare.
The Pet Shop Boys get in on the act, writing and producing She's Madonna, a song of such bloody awfulness that words alone cannot convey its aural mundanity. Shame on Neil and Chris I say.
Robbie "performs" a cover of new writing partner Stephen "Tintin" Duffy's Eighties classic Kiss Me. He even has the temerity to cover the wonderful Bongo Bong by Manu Chao, and segue into Chau's Je Ne T'Aime Plus. But where he truly goes off the rails is his version of the Human League's Louise; believe me, it's truly terrible.
Actually that goes for most of this hugely forgettable album.
