Let Robbie Williams entertain you

By IAN BURRELL

Robbie Williams is to be sent back to the United States by his record company amid mounting concern among EMI executives at his failure to break the world's most important music market.

EMI's frenetic efforts to recover its £80 million investment in Williams will see him embark on a three-month tour in September. The 29-year-old has spent the past few weeks in America but failed to convince a steadfastly lukewarm public of his charms.

Music industry sources said the singer's lyrics, describing the mental turmoil of celebrity life, had mystified audiences that had never heard of him.

Larry Flick, a senior talent editor at Billboard magazine, said: "There's a lot of commentary about how hard his life is as a star. To Americans it's, 'Who is this guy complaining about the hardships of being a celebrity? We've never seen him before'."

Over two weeks in America, Williams blitzed the television chat-show circuit and gave a live performance at a festival in New York, where he repeatedly reminded his audience: "I'm Robbie Williams".

But his album Escapology went into the Billboard 200 at number 43, a humbling position for a man accustomed to seeing his name at the top of charts all around the globe.

The record shifted only 31,000 copies in five weeks, by which time it had slipped down the chart to 156. Outside America, Escapology has sold six million copies and EMI must have hoped to shift a greater proportion of the 150,000 units they shipped across in anticipation of a favourable response to the star's promotional tour.

His efforts to crack the American market have again been thwarted by his commitments to a fanbase that reaches around the rest of the world.

But sources close to Williams said he was already planning a much bigger push in America before the year was out. His commitment to a three-month tour from September to November contradicts his oft-repeated claims that he is not worried by his lack of success across the Atlantic.

A spokeswoman for the singer said he would take a different approach. "He is going for the smaller, more intimate venues. He is going to be very visible."

She said Williams had enjoyed his best response in the past fortnight during stop-overs in San Francisco and San Diego, where he worked hard on self-promotion.

Contrary to some of the knocking copy in the British tabloids, Williams' television appearances were effective in raising his profile. His appearance on the Tonight Show was diminished in Britain because the star host Jay Leno was replaced by Katie Couric.

But some American viewers were impressed by Williams and his flirting with Couric, who is hugely popular, and that edition of Tonight registered exceptional ratings. The show also produced a small sales surge for Escapology.

Williams' problem is the lack of synchronicity in his career. While European audiences can understand the thought process behind lyrics such as "It's hard to be humble when you're so [expletive] big", the sentiment is lost in a US market where he is largely unrecognised.

America might be ready for the singer's earlier hit Let me Entertain You, but Williams is not ready to backtrack.

At Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival in New York a fortnight ago, he introduced his hit Angels with: "This song was released here a few years ago and guess what? It wasn't a hit. But I'm not bitter. It made me a star everywhere in the world but here."

Flick says Williams is also out of synch with American music tastes, dominated by hip-hop and heavy rock.

But if the American public does not get it, Billboard staff, at least, are fans, and Flick says the singer's next album could be the one that cracks America for him, particularly if he replaces his friend Guy Chambers with an American producer.

Williams' previous album, Sing When You're Winning, which headed the British album charts for weeks, made only number 110 in America.

By that measure, Escapology represents progress.

"In Britain, if a record doesn't go into the top 10, it's seen as a failure," Flick said.

"But it's a bigger landscape here. I think there's a huge financial commitment and the label was encouraged enough to believe they should keep working him."


- INDEPENDENT