‘She’s the One’ is not Robbie Williams’ best known number one. Nor does it get the airplay of a ‘Rock DJ’, a ‘Feel’, or an ‘Angels’. But if you’ll let me, I’d like to suggest that it’s one of his very best.
She’s the One / It’s Only Us, by Robbie Williams (his 2nd of seven solo #1s)
1 week, from 14th – 21st November 1999
At least, I always thought so. Until today, when everything I believed was rocked to its core… ‘She’s the One’ is a cover. World Party, a project fronted by former Waterboys member Karl Wallinger, recorded and released the original in 1997, and it was an Ivor Novello-winning, film soundtrack appearing, performed-on-Jools-Holland sort of hit. I’m ashamed of myself for not discovering this much earlier…
Robbie Williams delivers a facsimile of this song – same instrumentation, same harmonies, same vocal range – and delivers it very well. It is a lovely song; a very late-Britpop, arms around your mates in the pub sort of tune. It could easily have been recorded by Oasis, which of course means it has lots of nice Beatlesy touches to it, in the drum-fills and the backing vocals. But I feel slightly cheated now, after all these years of enjoying this so-called Robbie Williams hit.
What the original doesn’t have is a Brit Award winning video set in the world of competitive figure skating, with Robbie playing a has-been skater given one last chance at glory. Plus, it means Barry Davies, the greatest football commentator of my lifetime, can claim a number one single. (My dream aged thirteen, when this song came out, was to be Barry Davies.)
There was some drama, and some fairly ungentlemanly behaviour from Williams, when he started claiming that ‘She’s the One’ was the best song he had ever written. Some of Wallinger’s band played on the cover, unknown to Wallinger himself, and he suffered a brain aneurysm around the time it was hitting #1. Still, he did well off the royalties, and in interviews has claimed that this record saved him from penury. Williams has also, more recently, finally admitted that he didn’t write the song.
What of the double-‘A’ side, ‘It’s Only Us’? The fact I don’t think I’d ever heard this suggests it was more of a jumped-up ‘B’-side than a true double-‘A’. It was written for the soundtrack to FIFA 2000 and, again, it’s very Britpop indebted, this time more Supergrass than Oasis. It rollocks along nicely with lyrics that namecheck Williams’ hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, as well as ‘Rock Me Amadeus’, and with a fun end-of-the-pier organ solo. It’s also one of those songs where Robbie makes a drugs reference – We’re just after cheaper thrills, Since the price went up on pills… – of the sort that always feels a little try-hard for a former boyband member, like a teenager trying to shock his parents. We get it, Robbie. We get it.
It’s worth noting that this was the fourth single from ‘I’ve Been Expecting You’, the album that had given us ‘Millennium’ well over a year earlier. Taking the fourth single from an already huge-selling album to number one requires some serious star power, something that Robbie had in abundance in the late ‘90s. In fact, this moment saw the breakout star from the decade’s biggest boyband knocking his female counterpart, Geri Halliwell, off top-spot. The following year the pair would even date for a couple of months. Geri and Robbie, top of the pops and pretending to be a couple for the tabloids… Pop culture doesn’t get any more turn-of-the-21st-century that that.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
My daughters were both big Robbie Williams fans, so I rather enjoyed playing them the original – and best – version of this at the time. World Party may not have sold as many records as he did, but they were much more to my liking!
I’m surprised both by how similar Robbie’s version is, and with how I never knew it was a cover until I wrote this post!
In the presence of a master songwriter all Robbie could do was copy him. His long held claim to have written the song himself was distasteful, to say the least.
New to me, but very enjoyable.
I don’t think I’ve heard either of these songs. “She’s the One” kinda sounds like him trying to do “Angels” again. Robbie is not really that great of a singer, but I think he does convey a satisfactory level of emotion on this track. It’s an okay song. Like a mid-tier Take That ballad. Forgettable but nothing bad.
Now, “It’s Only Us”, that I like. You’re right – it sounds a lot like Supergrass (the best Britpop band), like it should belong on I Should Coco. Though the production is a bit glossier than a typical Supergrass song. Not an amazing song, but a good track.
For me, She’s the One is much better than Angels. More understated, less aggressively sentimental, and not as overplayed… It’s Only Us is fun, like you said, but pretty throwaway.
I think I might feel the same way as you if I lived in the UK but I only hear “Angels” like once every three months in the public here down under so the song hasn’t lost it’s lustre or me.
Funnily, at some point in the late 2000s, after a decade of being everywhere – from karaoke nights to funerals to getting murdered on the X Factor – ‘Angels’ sort of stopped being Britain’s unofficial national anthem. I’m not sure why, maybe just over-saturation, but you don’t hear it that much any more. (Having said that, I haven’t live in the UK for over a decade so could be spouting nonsense…)
I’ve posted World Party’s She’s The One…when I played this…I thought…wait…this should be World Party! I love their version…I found it way way back when World Party released it. I never knew someone covered it. He did a good job on it…I just like the Karl Wallinger’s voice more.
I’m still ashamed that I’d never heard the World Party version!Williams really didn’t do much different with it, so I’m not surprised you thought it was the same song..
Stewart that does show you one thing. Sometimes the song isn’t to blame for not charting…it can be a great song and chart at 50 and someone can copy it exactly and make #1.
You are right. It does help to make a song a hit when the biggest pop star in the country is singing it! Also, which label, how much money for promo etc… Artists have always needed ‘patrons’. Hell, Michelangelo could only paint the Sistine Chapel because the pope was backing him. (I’m not sure how I ended up comparing Robbie Williams to Michelangelo…) Anyway, at least Wallinger got a load of money from this cover.
Hey that was a great switching of gears there! Yea I’m glad he was paid. I’m not just saying this…but when I heard it the first time I thought to myself…why the hell was this not a hit? It has everything. I heard it in a movie.
Well Stewart….I’m an idiot…I forgot I said this when I covered it. No wonder it sounds so much alike…IT IS. I wrote this….
Robbie Willams covered the song in 1998 and took it to number 1 in 1999 in the UK charts. The song’s producer, Guy Chambers, used World Party’s touring band to perform the backing track for Williams, resulting in an identical sounding cover.
I don’t know where I got that info
Here man…it got nasty lol!
Yes! I read that too. Basically his band went and played on the cover without telling him. Then he got really sick, and Robbie kept claiming he wrote the song! No wonder he was pissed off!
I can’t believe I didn’t remember that…but it was probably when we were stuck at home because of covid and I was writing many at the time.
I’m surprised I hadn’t seen your post at the time, or commented. I would have been better prepared for writing my post (though, let’s be honest, I’d have probably forgotten)!
I liked his comment about how his song had a better time than he did lol.
Well I forgot about Robbie completely. I had to ask you about him.
It’s Only Us got no airplay, which is a shame as I much prefer it to She’s The One which has never moved me that much. I’m glad he got Karl some cash, and love Robbie, love Angels (though it took me a while to click on why it was such an anthem) but The airplay side just tipped over the edge into sentimentality a bit for me, but it sounds OK now I play it here.