In the last episode of Robbie Williamsthe Netflix documentary series, a Take That group performs The Flood live. The song, cheesy, over-the-top and shamelessly intended to be an anthem (spoiler: it was not, it is not) displays its enormous power live. Maybe everything that surrounds The Flood It may be ridiculous, but that doesn’t mean it’s one of my favorite songs of all time. Just like the concert that Robbie Williams gave, just 20 years ago, at the Palacio de Vistalegre in Madrid, it was one of the concerts of my life. I belong to the Robbie generation and that is why I write this. It is very likely that the series with which the artist reviews his career is not good, but let me not have the necessary criteria to judge it. Yes I like it The FloodHow can I not like this?
In the United Kingdom, the Robbie Williams from Netflix has been savagely vilified by quite a few media outlets. Thus something that is told in it is repeated: there are British people who still have not forgiven Williams for leaving Take That, the boy band that made him a star. He did not do much to obtain that forgiveness, everything must be said, but You have to be childish to continue reproaching him for something that happened in 1995. In the series he does not elaborate too much on the reasons for that breakup. Yes, he was already beginning to be, as Belén Esteban would say, confused.
In Robbie Williams We see Robbie Williams in his underwear reviewing videos of his career. The star thus appears vulnerable but in control of the situation. He has never been modest (not even when more than once, recently, he has lost his temper in his networks) and also his fans, among whom I count myself, choose to believe. And we are not so stupid as not to understand that A pop icon is made of artifice and projections, and that what counts is the story. That of Robbie Williams, more than one of improvement, is one of acceptance. “I look authentic,” he says of images in which, now in his thirties, he spouts nonsense at the camera.
The format is a bit “Robbie Williams to Robbie Williams video reaction” and a bit found footage of, for example, his two most famous romantic relationships. First, with Nicole Appleton, member of All Saints, the reaction group to the Spice Girls; and later with Geri Halliwell, leader of Spice and their female equivalent. She also decided to leave a successful group and become a solo artist. It turned out worse than Robbie, but he handled it better than him. For the nineties generation (see: mine) seeing them on vacation in Mallorca is mythical and endearing. They are two burned-out guys, two superstars, two legends and two broken toys. I couldn’t go to Robbie Williams’ last concert in Barcelona, but it was almost better this way. I imagine that it was full of nostalgic forty-somethings of a star that perhaps only they recognize as such. What a painting. I have enough with having The Flood y Rudebox on loop in my headphones when I go for a run, like the middle-aged man I already am.