Robbie Williams live in London: Good old fashioned entertainment fills a stadium
It's bonkers, bizarre and it doesn't all make sense. But you can't fault Robbie's commitment to old fashioned entertainment.
By Nick Reilly
“My dream is to become the greatest entertainer on the planet… the king of entertainment,” says Robbie Williams as he greets the Emirates Stadium crowd while wearing a silver spacesuit.
It’s a fitting mantra for the man who has always occupied one of the most curious spaces in British pop history. On one hand is the man with his place cemented in UK pop history after flogging 75 million albums and enough awards to fill his LA mansion. On the other is the man who, at various points during tonight’s show, speaks to an AI rendering of his younger and older self and belts out a cover of Dennis Waterman’s Minder theme tune. It’s unpredictable, unrepentantly wild and definitely entertainment.
It begins with the moment when Robbie enters in the aforementioned space suit and goes straight into his new 70s flecked single ‘Rocket’, before a customary run-through of ‘Let Me Entertain You’ gets the entire stadium pogoing. As for that entertainment, it’s abundantly clear when he begins a lightning speed medley of Foo Fighters, Blur, Bon Jovi and The White Stripes. It’s unhinged, but he’s only too aware of the silliness. “You need to forget about being cool and just commit,” he posits.
To his credit, he completely commits. Whether that’s commanding the crowd while wearing a coat that resembled a giant pink loofah or bringing out Lulu for ‘Relight My Fire’, it’s a complete carnival of madness that rarely gives you time to take in one moment before the next arrives.
Among the strangest is with the chat with an AI rendering of a young Robbie (cue jokes about his hedonistic past) and then an older Robbie too (cue some end-of-the-pier jokes about erectile dysfunction). There’s also the moment when he inexplicably brings out Lethal Bizzle to perform his recent track ‘Can’t Touch This’, before Bizzle is joined by Wiley. The latter guest in particular seems an ill-advised choice, given that he was stripped of his MBE last year after making a series of anti-semitic comments online in 2020 and is yet to properly address his actions.
At the core of the show, though, is the same showmanship that has propelled Robbie to national treasure status over the last 30 years. He serenades a fan who has travelled from China during ‘She’s the One’ and spends large portions endearingly talking about how his family have saved his life. He ends the main portion of the set with ‘My Way’, which feels like the most appropriate of closers. Here was an artist offering a firm two fingers up to the idea of cool and resolutely dancing to the beat of their own entertainment-packed drum. The result, for the most part, is one of the most thrilling stadium shows of the year.