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Entertainment WeeklyWhile this new Reality contains fewer knockout potential hits than past efforts, it does boast the two strongest soul-flecked tracks of Williams career. [20 Nov 1009, p.87]
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You might expect an album this musically surefooted to be triumphalist in tone, but Reality Killed the Video Star is more complicated and interesting than that.
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By agreeing instead to compromise he's actually found both the quality and integrity he so desires and an album of songs which by anyone's definition sounds like a return to form.
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Like the verbal tricks he loves to employ, the appeal of Robbie Williams might still be too tricky to be truly universal. But this album proves that he is a great brain teaser.
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The end result may not be enough to convince America it's missing out, but expect this album to bring the already-converted back onboard in droves.
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The typically droll Video Star includes a cowbell-enhanced rave-up ('Do You Mind'), a bit of Lady Gaga–ish electro-pop ('Last Days of Disco'), and one track named after Transformers ('Deceptacon'). It's a charm offensive with stars and stripes.
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Comparisons with Older are revealing, for Robbie sounds a bit world weary here at times, and the orchestrations are layered on thickly in an attempt to bring some brightness to the grey. Sometimes this works--with the electro swagger of Bodies a case in point--but other times the colour is a pasty, codeine white.
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For the most part, Reality... swings between the mawkish strings and piano overproduction which Williams has seemed overly attached to ever since 1998's Bond-inspired 'Millennium,' and flashes of genuine pop frivolity, for which he likely has producer Trevor Horn to thank.
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Millennial ‘It’ Boy gets the horn on eighth album.
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The album is a solid contribution to Williams’ catalogue, but doesn’t achieve the peerless pop and dance genius of "The Ego Has Landed" (1999) or "Sing When You’re Winning" (2000).
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MojoReality Killed The Video Star - produced, as the title suggests, by Trevor Horn - offers more than a glimmer of hope. [Dec 2009, p. 94]
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Q MagazineThe majority of Reality Killed the Video Star - a reliably punning title, and this one almost works - seems to have taken its glum atmospheric cue from Morrissey's Vauxhall And I or Rufus Wainwright's less fruity concoctions - without necessarily taking on board any of their melodic or lyrical gifts. [Dec 2009, p. 108]
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UncutA gift for deadpan couplets alone can't quite elevate him to [Rufas Wainwright or Pet Shop Boys'] league, [but] this album offer signs that, if he want to, Robbie might escape the neurosis of celebrity and mature into a genuinely witty songwriter. [Dec 2009, p.121]
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By downplaying Williams's formerly irrepressible charm, Reality simply doesn't make for an effective reintroduction to one of the U.S. pop market's biggest missed opportunities.
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In its defense, Reality isn’t a “comeback” album--even Williams admits it’s too late to recapture his former glory--but the blandly derivative collection raises the question of what the aborted 2007 album sounded like. Compared to this, maybe art.
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The more you delve into it the less you find, because it’s all affectation.
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The whole album lacks focus. Williams jumps around from big band to Pet Shop Boys electro to piano ballads to easy rocking. The one common thread is overproduction.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 37 out of 46
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Mixed: 2 out of 46
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Negative: 7 out of 46
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Jul 24, 2020Again, Robbie shows us that he's a great songwriter and a great artist. He rocks a new sound and does it perfectly.
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Dec 27, 2013
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Dec 10, 2012