Heavy Entertainment Show
by Robbie Williams
  • Record Label: Columbia
  • Release Date: Nov 4, 2016
User Score
8.2

Universal acclaim- based on 67 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 56 out of 67
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 67
  3. Negative: 8 out of 67
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  1. Albumsoutof100
    Nov 7, 2016
    4
    Sadly, after a fun and joyfully satirical opener in the title track, The Heavy Entertainment Show soon reveals that almost all of its entertainment value lies within its first 20 minutes. 'Mixed Signals' and the sweet 'Love My Life' satisfy, recalling his surprisingly solid 2014 B-sides album 'Under The Radar'. The first red flag comes with 'Motherf**ker', which while amusingly written,Sadly, after a fun and joyfully satirical opener in the title track, The Heavy Entertainment Show soon reveals that almost all of its entertainment value lies within its first 20 minutes. 'Mixed Signals' and the sweet 'Love My Life' satisfy, recalling his surprisingly solid 2014 B-sides album 'Under The Radar'. The first red flag comes with 'Motherf**ker', which while amusingly written, will be far too self-referential for anyone not intimately acquainted with the minutiae of Williams' family life to grasp the vague intricacies of. Disappointingly, the track's lyrics are almost the direct antithesis of 'Love My Life' too, serving the listener an unwelcome reminder that because many of these tracks have been written by disparate teams of writers, the album as a whole has little internal coherence. Indeed, the vapid 'Sensitive', the chaotically produced 'Bruce Lee' and the casually insensitive 'Hotel Crazy' - the latter seeming to blithely trivialize mental illness ("I'm a Big Mac short of a happy meal"/"the only thing they should be checking out is my ass!") - prove that although for the large part the album has some of William's best ear candy of recent years, it has little class or originality to back it up with. Indeed, the studio recording of his concert-closer 'Sensational' saves the latter half of the album from entire banality almost single-handedly, with its clever book-ending recollecting the album's title track, and reminding us that the whole thing has just been one more soulless money-grabbing release in an ever-growing line of similarly inspired post-Rudebox releases. It may well keep him up with payments on his house in LA, as he isn't afraid to brag, but The Heavy Entertainment Show just doesn't do anything fresh enough to reinvigorate Williams' ever-more stagnant discography.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

86
#86 Most Discussed Album of 2016

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
59

Mixed or average reviews - based on 9 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 9
  3. Negative: 1 out of 9
  1. Clash Music
    Nov 28, 2016
    40
    Unfocused, inconsistent and underwhelming, The Heavy Entertainment Show is homogenised pop at its most stupefying.
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  2. AllMusic
    Nov 11, 2016
    80
    Mr. Entertainment and his bombast do not disappoint. The Heavy Entertainment Show is his most invigorated album in years, a truer return to the pop realm than 2012's Take the Crown.
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  3. Drowned In Sound
    Nov 8, 2016
    30
    The feeling [is] that nothing here belongs to Robbie Williams, that he’s officially completely interchangeable, that he’s become trapped in a maze of his own making, and all of the noise seems so very quiet now.
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