Robbie Williams has secured a major milestone on the UK album chart, surpassing The Beatles to become the artist with the most number one albums in chart history.<\/p>\n
Williams’ album Britpop, released last Friday, is the 16th number one of his solo career, which launched in 1997 with Life Thru A Lens.<\/p>\n
“This is unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable,” he told BBC News.<\/p>\n
“I’ve always said my success has been the equivalent of stretching an elastic band from Stoke-on-Trent to the Moon. Well, I reckon the elastic band just got longer, and now it’s orbiting Venus.”<\/p>\n
He added: “It’s just sensational what has happened. I feel like the Forrest Gump of pop.”<\/p>\n
The star is currently in Paris for a weekend break with his wife, Ayda Field. He said they would celebrate “with a Coke Zero and a salad”.<\/p>\n
It’s a far cry from the hedonism of the 1990s, when the star’s initial burst of success was overshadowed by dependency on drink and drugs, and an eventual mental health breakdown.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to take this week, at least, to remind myself of how lucky I am,” he said. <\/p>\n
“Because for a while, I didn’t get to do that because of mental illness or whatever. But now I am firmly in a place where the garden is blossoming, and I’m just surveying the pastures.<\/p>\n
“And, I think that’s the biggest achievement, that I can sit in that [moment] and take a deep breath and smile.”<\/p>\n
In a neat moment of circularity, Williams’ record-breaking album harks back to the start of his solo career, and the period when he nearly lost himself.<\/p>\n
The cover art is based on the famous Mick Hudson photo, taken at Glastonbury festival in 1995, of Robbie with bleached blonde hair and a missing tooth. It was an incident that ultimately led to his dismissal from boy band Take That.<\/p>\n
He has called Britpop “the album that I wanted to write after I left Take That” and a celebration of “a golden age for British music” that harnesses the energy of 90s bands like Oasis and Elastica.<\/p>\n
Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes lends a hand on glam-stomp anthem Cocky, and Williams’ former Take That nemesis Gary Barlow appears on a song called Morrissey, written from the perspective of a delusional stalker.<\/p>\n
Reviews for the record have been broadly positive.<\/p>\n
The Guardian called it “a wayward yet winning time-machine trip to the 90s” in a four-star review<\/a>.<\/p>\n