In my intro to ‘7 Days’ I suggested that Craig David’s signature tune was the year 2000’s best remembered song. I wrote that, though, in the full knowledge that I’d say the exact same thing about the following chart-topper…
Rock DJ, by Robbie Williams (his 3rd of seven solo #1s)
1 week, from 6th – 13th August 2000
Craig David was a popular young upstart; but this was the lead single from the biggest pop star of the day’s third album. And it’s Robbie at his Robbiest. If you don’t much care for his music, then ‘Rock DJ’ is probably one of the songs you care for the least. I got the gift gonna stick it in the goal… Cheeky nonsense like this in the verses – which he half-raps in a delivery that reminds me of Ian Dury – and a dancefloor-filling chorus. I don’t wanna rock DJ, But you’re making me feel alright…
For me, anyway, this is undeniable pop. Robbie Williams has made so many of these songs: songs that I would never look for but when they come on I’m forced to admit that, yep, they’re undeniable tunes. Meanwhile, this is probably the first time I’ve listened to ‘Rock DJ’ through headphones, and thus the first time I’ve noticed how nasty the bassline is.
Speaking of the beat, we need to give another shout out to Barry White, who (sort of) features on his second chart-topper of the year with a sample from his 1977 hit ‘It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me’. There are also small borrowings from a Tribe Called Quest’s ‘Can I Kick It?’ and a track called ‘La Di Da Di’ by Slick Rick.
The video was, I remember at the time, also big news. Robbie is doing what he does best: demanding attention, this time at a roller disco. An uninterested female DJ remains impassive as he takes off his vest and jeans, and then strips off completely. But a naked Robbie Williams isn’t the story (it’s all tastefully blurred out anyway, in the Japanese fashion). Next he wrenches off his skin, before tearing off his muscles and organs and chucking them into the blood-spattered faces of the female roller-skaters. In the end, the DJ eventually deigns to dance with his skeleton. I think it’s maybe a comment on his fame, and everyone wanting a piece of him, but it’s completely bizarre. And to this day I don’t think I’d ever actually seen it in full, as the music channels of the day always cut it after he took off his pants.
So, huge lead single, controversial video: odds-on number one. And thus it came to pass. But even this massive record couldn’t break our run of one-weekers. The turnover in the summer of 2000 was relentless, so on we go…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Number one for only one week is surprising – i heard this one a lot.
Yeah, so many number ones at that time only spent a week. There’s never been a period of faster turnover in the charts.
Major classic alert, Robbie still in his peak era, I bet he could bung out an album of crooner classics and sell in bucketloads! 🙂 Love Robbie, saw him at Net Aid, that now star-studded charity online Wembley Stadium concert and he easily stole the show, a huge huge proper entertainer and pop star, to date the last male solo British pop star in that category. I saw him a few years back again at St Mary’s Southampton, and even with a bad back he was still a great showman. Number One popstar of the late 90’s and early 2000’s for me, with Guy Chambers they re-invented, referenced, played with and celebrated pop music old and new, mashing up genres with liveliness and also with sentiment and sincerity.
Rock DJ is a great track, love the Barry White bounce, love the video – right up to the point where he rips his skin off, at which point I go off it. Robbie has recently been interviewed for specials on Boybands and their experiences, of the 90’s, and it’s actually very sad for a lot of then-lads what they went through. Yes they got fame and riches but they also got burn-out and mental problems. Robbie included, but I think the energy from needing to prove himself carried him through the solo years. I’ve said it before, but I think his conversational-style lyrics are under-rated, he’s rather good with words, and Guy Chambers is a top music-man.
I can imagine he’d put on a great show, and you’d know the words to all the songs without realising it.
I think in terms of the boyband stars who needed to prove themselves and make ‘respectable’ music, Robbie struck the best balance, never seeming to take himself that seriously (unlike Gary Barlow, say) but also getting, sometimes grudging, respect from the serious music types.
I was 1 years old when this song came out but this was probably the first Robbie Williams song I ever heard (obviously don’t remember hearing it when it was a current hit but I remember hearing it out and about during the mid-to-late-2000s). Awesome song. A great mix of dance-rock, disco and dance-pop. A classic at this point. The music video is nuts – I heard it got played on MTV and VH1 in the US and a lot of Americans were freaked out by it.
BTW, I saw his biopic Better Man – probably one of the few who did considering it bombed really hard, I read a lot of Americans don’t know who Robbie Williams is and either initially thought it was a Robin Williams biopic or a Pearl Jam biopic – and it was awesome. Easily one of the best biopics I’ve seen – the last great ones I’d say was the Elton John Rocket Man and the Brian Wilson Love and Mercy one.
I do really want to see Better Man, but haven’t got around to it yet. I think the idea of Robbie as a chimpanzee put a lot of people off who might have otherwise enjoyed it.
As for the video, I remember it being a hot topic at school but in those pre YouTube days I never saw it. I didn’t have satellite TV until later, so no MTV or other music channels. Even watching it now, the CGI having dated somewhat, it’s still jarring.
You hit it with the Ian Dury mention…I knew it sounded familiar with the way he was singing. I still don’t like what he did to World Party.