Is “Party Like A Russian” (by Robbie Williams) good enough for a come back after 3 years?

It seemed like a joke to me when I first saw the video. It’s definitely not even close to his old hits like Feel, Angels or Come undone, not even Candy. Candy, a song released 3 years ago was NO. 1 in UK as far as I recall.

It’s quite a catchy song in my opinion, but not a hit. If this is the first song on the album to be promoted, I don’t know what to say… the other ones could be worse than this?

I heard “Sensational”, that Robbie sang in concerts and it seems better than “Party like a russian”. I hope it will be released after this one.

Anyway, the marketing strategy was quite good. Most russians hate oligarchs and Robbie, the British, says what they really want to hear… about Putin I guess. And there are around 140 thousand Russians. At least THEM should be interested in this song – they should be happy that someone in the western side talks and sings about them. It does not happen too often.

It’s a controversial song, people discuss about it, it’s in the news, I guess that was the point. Good or not, Robbie might be visible again, even in his 40s.

They say that if his new album “Heavy Entertainment Show” reaches no 1 in UK, Robbie will have as many no 1 albums as Elvis (news from OfficialCharts). Many can’t stand him as he has a huge ego and he’s quite superficial, but he’s one of the most appealing entertainers today. No other male or female artist can entertain as much as he does in concerts. It’s not about his music as much as about his personality and charisma.

Anyway, I hope he won’t let us down with his music either. We want something really good from him. You want to beat Elvis, you gotta work harder for that. He says he has collaborations with Ed Sheeran, Big Narstie, Rufus Wainwright, John Grant, Brandon Flowers from The Killers, Stuart Price and others.

The Russian journalist Natalia Antonova from The Guardian tells us how things are in fact:

• “It’s just a song about those crazy Russians” that like to party hard
• Robbie’s song is more than just a collection of stupid references to oligarchs
• most of us know about their excesses, so why should they be upset?
• Natalia stresses that these verses, that I like most in this song “I put a bank inside a car inside a plane inside a boat / It takes half the western world just to keep my ship afloat” refer to the western lawyers and politicians who allow corrupt Russians deposit their money in their banks
• oligarchs are in fact Russian politicians