Robbie Williams

Williams first became famous with Take That, then built a solo career that made far more room for his own unruly personality. Life thru a Lens arrived in 1997 with guitars, sharp elbows and a run of songs written with Guy Chambers. “Angels” gave the album its emotional centre; “Let Me Entertain You” supplied the stage entrance. Those two songs still explain a great deal about the artist.

I’ve Been Expecting You followed in 1998, bringing the cinematic sweep of “Millennium”, the gentler “She’s the One” and a stronger sense that Williams could carry a whole record rather than one breakout single. Sing When You’re Winning in 2000 made the contrasts even clearer. “Rock DJ” turned him into a pop ringmaster, while “Feel”, from the later Escapology, let the bravado fall away.

Swing When You’re Winning was more than a title joke. The 2001 standards album let Williams lean into an older kind of showmanship, including the Nicole Kidman duet “Somethin’ Stupid”. Rudebox, five years later, took the opposite route through electronic production and deliberately awkward humour. The distance between those records is part of the point: his catalogue is rarely as tidy as a greatest-hits sequence suggests.

The most rewarding way into the music is to keep the spectacle and the smaller songs together. The big choruses give him scale, but the hesitation in his voice gives them weight. Even when the arrangement is broad, there is often a nervous human being somewhere in the middle of it. That combination makes the songs feel lived in.