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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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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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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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Millennial ‘It’ Boy gets the horn on eighth album.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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]
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