Robbie Williams opens up about his depression when writing 'Feel'

When I wrote Feel, I was the most depressed that I've ever been

Welcome back to Heart's Evening Show. How are you? I'm good, mate. I'm sorry about that. I am jet-lagged. I've been on a plane. I've had COVID

but now you are part of the medicine for my soul. It's lovely to clasp eyes on you once again

Thank you so much. Thanks for being colour-coordinated as well with the show. You're very on brand

It's what I do. I think ahead. I love that. Well, you've mentioned you're incredibly busy, Robbie, but I thought as soon as I've got your number and you haven't blocked me yet, we check in and see how you're doing, see how things are going

What's a typical evening like for Robbie Williams? My safe zone is my bed. If I'm out of my bed, I am not in my safe zone

So a typical evening will be me being in bed with my wife and the kids watching TV

to be honest with you i'm only out of bed if i'm working so there's a lot of bed happening

a lot of bed do you have like a really good setup then have you got one of those beds that um

that lifts it you've got a remote to like lift it up no no no but i do have a mattress that feels

like jesus made it i love that well we're very excited about your new album better man robbie

we get to hear some of our favorite Robbie Williams songs reimagined can you tell me about

the experience of recreating some of these songs was it is it a bit like looking at old photographs

did it did it bring back a lot of good memories I'll be really honest with you Dev it's it's admin

it just I got to get this done you know because I always in the future I never in the past but this project for the film was just too important and too massive not to give it my all So during the process I like OK let do this

But then the finished product is where I then gleam all of my jollies from when I then listen to it and go, wow

okay so we've reimagined these songs we've bettered most of the songs um so i'm glad i put

my all in but also at the same time it is it's admin the finished result is an admin it's special

we've picked some of our favorites here at heart and i thought it'd be amazing to hear about

But, well, we've all got our own take on your music, but I would love to hear what some of these songs mean to you

Like what comes to mind when I mention some of these songs. So first up, feel. First thing that comes to mind

This will bring it down. But when I wrote feel, I was the most depressed that I've ever been

And I guess I was newly sober. And when you are newly sober, you're taking away your medicine

but then when you take away your medicine you're left with all the symptoms and you're left with

why you became ill in the first place so definitely feel is me trying to manifest

a better life for myself in fact the chorus is I just want to feel really a love in the home that

I live in and I manifested it incredible let me entertain you uh let me entertain you

is probably my modus operandi And thank God that I wrote that song when I wrote that song with those words

because it kind of set me up for who I am and what I do and what is my USP. My unique selling

point is I want to entertain you. And weirdly, not many people in my position doing the job that I do

set out to do that and uh you know it's like i i want to be like this year i'm i'm on tour

i want to be the best entertainer on the planet i've got a couple more that i'd really love to

hear how you feel about um she's the one incredibly emotional song amazing uh new version by the way

on the album as well but what does that song mean to you when i went to rehab in 1997 there was one

album that I kept playing over and over again. And it was an album called Egyptology by a band

called World Party. Carl Wallinger was the lead singer and the writer for the band. And unfortunately

it passed away like last year or the year before. And it was my, the album meant so much to me. And

I love this song on there. She's the one. I had nothing to do with the writing of that. But I

I recorded it and put it out there. And then Carl, God bless him, hated the fact that I'd recorded his song, like was disgusted with me doing it

And it's it. I was very sensitive to the fact that somebody that I regard so highly regarded me so lowly

So I had to come to terms with the fact and I have that every time that i used to sing that song i used to think of the original writer not liking me or or not rating me in any way so it i had

a difficult relationship with it now i don't have a difficult relationship with it at all

i've gone back to where i was when i first fell in love with it incredible and lastly rock dj

uh rock dj world-class silliness you know it's um the secret of that song is that

it's based on a not i won't say a sample because we didn't use a sample but there's a

barry white song called ecstasy go and check it out barry white or the people that wrote barry

white songs sold their publishing to a man that lives in london and uh we had to go around to see

this man to beg him to at least give us some publishing on that song and i think that i've got

10 of that song now i wrote the silly rap and i wrote the silly chorus and uh what you should

morally get for writing the melody and the lyric to a whole song is 50 but i because this man

didn't want to give me 50% I have 10% of that song

Robbie thank you so much for talking to us we've got our fingers crossed

that this is going to be your 15th number one album we're going to find out

on Sunday on the EE official Big Top 40 Robbie Williams we'll see you again soon

we love you take care God bless Deb you take care of yourself