Robbie Williams

Robert Peter "Robbie" Williams(born 13 February 1974) is an English singer-songwriter, vocal coach and occasional actor. He is a member of pop group Take That. Williams rose to fame in the band's first run in the early- to mid-1990s. After many disagreements with the management and certain group members, Williams left the group in 1995 to launch his solo career. On 15 July 2010, it was announced he had rejoined Take That and that the group intended to release a new album in November 2010.

His debut album, Life thru a Lens, was released on 29 September 1997, on EMI Records. The album produced a string of successful singles, including "Angels", which has become one of his best known songs to date. Other successful singles from the album include "Old Before I Die" and "South of the Border". Williams followed up the success of his first album with his second album I've Been Expecting You, released on EMI Records on 26 October 1998. Like his debut, the album charted at number one on the UK Album Charts and was successful on other worldwide album charts. The album produced Williams's first UK number one single to that point, "Millennium". His third and fourth albums, Sing When You're Winning released on 28 August 2000 and Swing When You're Winning released on 19 November 2001 were well received by music critics, and like his previous albums, debuted at number one in the United Kingdom. Sing When You're Winning is more of a pop album, while Swing When You're Winning is more a jazz/big-band led album, in which Williams claimed that "he always wanted to do a jazz album". From both albums, successful singles were released, including "Rock DJ", which was released from Sing When You're Winning and "Somethin' Stupid" (featuring Nicole Kidman) which was released from Swing When You're Winning.

The follow-up album to Sing and Swing When You're Winning was Escapology, released on 28 November 2002. Escapology debuted at number one on the UK Album Charts, making this Williams's fifth UK #1 album. Singles released included "Feel", "Come Undone", "Something Beautiful" and "Sexed Up", all of which were top 10 hits in the UK. In 2004, Williams released a Greatest Hits album. His 2005 Intensive Care album was one of the best selling albums of 2005, and was the 53rd best selling album of the decade in the United Kingdom. His follow-up album, Rudebox, was however less successful in chart sales. After the release of Rudebox, Williams took a musical hiatus, and returned in 2009 with his long-awaited Trevor Horn-produced album Reality Killed the Video Star, which became his first album throughout his career not to chart at #1 on the UK Album Charts.

Williams has sold more than 55 million records worldwide. He is the best-selling British solo artist in the United Kingdom and the best selling non-Latino artist in Latin America. Six of his albums are among the top 100 biggest-selling albums in the United Kingdom. He has also been honoured with fifteen BRIT Awards—more than any other artist—and seven ECHO Awards. In 2004, he was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame after being voted as the "Greatest Artist of the 1990s."