K is for…..”Kids”, which is the new Robbie Williams single. It’s a grievous heap of arse. Robbie Williams is, as everyone loves to remind us, a Proper Pop Star, who is Entertaining yet still Down To Earth as well as being a bit Cheeky. He does Proper Pop Star things like going out with other pop stars and getting a little unwell, and he says controversial things and he is, all told, a bit of a National Treasure.
The only tiny thing – well, no, it seems rude to mention it really, just forget it, he’s great. What’s that? No, no, really, it’s nothing, terribly unimportant. Really? Well, if you insist…the one minuscule bit of being a Proper Pop Star that Robbie can’t quite do yet is the ‘good records’ bit. All his records are, to some degree, ham-fisted derivative shit. “Rock DJ”, his last single and an avowed throwaway (such high standards the boy has), was the nearest he’d come to producing good pop, if only because its bouncy verses were half-inched from M’s “Pop Muzik”, a track I’m rather obviously fond of.
Sadly with “Kids” we’re back to the usual formula – tiresome pop-rock sludge, like a third-rate Cheap Trick sung by a fifth-rate Elton. It has Kylie on it, and a rap wherein Rob says naughty things. I feel a much, much lesser human being for hearing it. However I meant what I said about the songs stuff not being important – Robbie is a modern icon because he exemplifies a culture where you don’t have to be particularly good at anything you do as long as you do it with attitude, which Robbie has by the skipload. As cultures go it’s better than one centered on deferential forelock-tugging, to be sure, but the choice was never that simple and it certainly isn’t now.