Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Robbie Williams · S5 E3
Intensive Care
Making an album alone — without Chambers, without a safety net
2004. Robbie Williams needs a new songwriting partner, and he finds one in the last place anyone expects: a cult singer-songwriter from Birmingham who once walked away from one of the biggest bands on earth.
Tripping (2005). The lead single from Intensive Care and the first major release from the Williams-Duffy partnership. A statement of intent: he can still write a pop anthem without Guy Chambers.
Tripping (2005)
Tripping opens with a propulsive guitar riff and never lets go. The production has a rawer, more guitar-driven energy than the Chambers era. Duffy brings a completely different musical vocabulary, and you can hear it in every chord. Williams sounds liberated rather than lost.
“It felt like being in a band again. Just two people in a room, writing songs, no baggage.”
— Robbie Williams, Intensive Care press campaign, 2005
TAP TO REVEAL: What unlikely connection links Robbie Williams to Duran Duran?
The Writing Room
Williams and Duffy write quickly and instinctively, without the weight of a decade of shared history. The sessions are loose and fast, built on acoustic guitars and a tape recorder rather than studio production. It is the opposite of everything the Chambers partnership had become.
Intensive Care by Numbers
Advertising Space -- Robbie Williams
The second single from Intensive Care. A sweeping, melancholic track about the price of fame, with imagery widely interpreted as a reference to Elvis Presley. It connects directly to this season's running theme: what happens when the spotlight becomes the problem.
Who co-wrote Intensive Care with Robbie Williams?
Intensive Care proves Williams can still make hits. But behind the number-one album and the sold-out tours, something is breaking, and it will take him years to admit what it is.
0 XP earned this session