Into the eight hundreds, and we do so with a bold statement of a number one…

Millennium, by Robbie Williams (his 1^st of seven solo #1s)

1 week, from 13^th – 20^th September 1998

The biggest British pop star at the turn of the century, the black sheep of the ‘90s biggest boyband, finally scores a solo number one. It’s a cocky, swaggering track, making nice use of a sample from Nancy Sinatra’s ‘You Only Live Twice’. (Though in actual fact it is a rerecording in a slightly higher key, which was cheaper than paying for the original.) Anyway, it slams the door open, sweeps into the room chorus first, declaring ‘I’m here!’

After that comes a state of the nation address, over a hip-hop beat. Live for liposuction, Detox for your rent, Overdose at Christmas, And give it up for Lent… We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are gazing at the stars, that sort of thing. It’s very zeitgeist grabbing, very of-the-moment, less than a year and a half before Y2K, all delivered with a sense of theatre by Robbie Williams. We’re praying it’s not too late… he sings in the chorus… Millennium…

Even if you’re stuck behind a dead end desk job in Slough, the appeal of an idea that we’ve got stars directing our dishevelled fates is clear. My favourite bit though is the nonchalantly loutish Come and have a go if you think you are hard enough… chant. It is this that sums up the post-Britpop nineties, the lads and the ladettes, the alcopops, all that. It’s clever, and catchy, somehow deep without really trying.

Some pop stars don’t seem to care about their chart fortunes, about whether or not a song will be a hit, but I don’t think Robbie Williams is one of them. At this point in his career at least, he seemed to relish being famous, being on stage, on TV, on the radio. And he released songs that were big and catchy, that appealed to the widest possible audience, like this one. He certainly had charisma, the X-factor that the best pop stars need. But he also had a clever team around him, and a songwriting partner in Guy Chambers who guided him through this imperious phase from 1998 to the early years of the 2000s.

‘Millennium’ was the lead single from Williams’ second album, ‘I’ve Been Expecting You’, but to pinpoint the moment he became Britain’s biggest pop star we need to rewind a few months to when ‘Angels’ was dominating the charts and the airwaves, to the extent that it began to feel like the country’s unofficial national anthem. Despite peaking at #4 it remains his biggest selling single. Following that his now signature tune ‘Let Me Entertain You’ made #3, and the rest is history.

It had been a long time coming, though. Williams had left Take That over three years before, and spent a year fighting a clause in his contract preventing him from launching a solo career while his former band were still recording. Fittingly, his first release was a cover of George Michael’s ‘Freedom’, which made #2 in July 1996, around the same time his bandmate Gary Barlow was releasing the dull ‘Forever Love’. Compare and contrast Barlow’s two forgettable number ones with this one, and it’s not hard to see why Williams went on to be the far bigger solo star.

It’s also hard to overstate how big Robbie Williams was becoming when this record went to the top. I wouldn’t count myself a huge fan, and I’ve never bought any of his music, but it turns out I knew all the words to ‘Millennium’ through sheer osmosis. He will have a nice and steady drip-feed of #1s for the next few years, so I’ll have plenty of time to test my knowledge of his other lyrics as we go on.