Lyrics: “Better Man” – Robbie Williams, 2000
I’m a few years too old to have been in the target demographic for Take That. The guys are all about my age. Of course I’ve been aware of them when they entered the European / international pop world in 1993 and I liked them well enough. For some reason I always had a bit of a soft spot for Robbie Williams. The baby of the band effect maybe? His career was the only one I sort of followed after he had left the band and when the others later embarked on solo careers as well.
For some reason I still remember where I bought the “Angels” CD single. At the Globen shopping centre in Stockholm during my term abroad sometime in winter 1997/1998. And yes I lived through the small window of history where there were CD singles, I’m that old.
Over 25 years on I admit, that I’m not sure if my memories are correct or if over time I changed my own narrative to fit the narrative I’d like to tell people. I looked through the blog archives from way back then (1998 onwards) and even though I find multiple mentions of Robbie Williams as “music I’m listening to” or “favourite singer” reply to questionnaires, I didn’t find a post about what some of his lyrics meant to me or how well I could relate to them. Maybe I hadn’t been ready to put it into words back then unlike more than a decade later when I had even more profound experiences with Frank Turner’s lyrics resonating with my inner turmoil.
Anyway there are two lyrical bits that stayed with me since then. From the song “Strong” in 1998
Life’s too short to be afraid
Step inside the sun
and of course from the all in all brilliant “Sing When You’re Winning” album in 2000 the song “Better Man”
Go easy on my conscience
‘Cause it’s not my fault
I know I’ve been taught
To take the blame
Rest assured my angels
Will catch my tears
Walk me out of here
I’m in painAs my soul heals the shame
I will grow through this pain
Lord, I’m doing all I can
To be a better man
I remember (I think, see narrative above) that these words really hit home. That weird feeling of not being good enough, not worthy enough, not loveable enough and that all the “not enoughs” were my own fault. And that it hurt and that I was in pain, even though I obviously wasn’t in any place to articulate that for almost two decades longer. So much time wasted and spent in the depths of self-loathing and anxiety. Ugh! Let’s better not dwell on that. But I guess it gives you an idea of why I always felt like I could relate to Robbie in some way.
I saw Robbie live in 2006 once and one more time on the Take That Progress Tour in 2011. When I was going through the old blog posts I found that I wasn’t too impressed with the live show in 2006. I kind of called his antics on stage generic and lame and I hadn’t even experienced a Frank Turner show yet. Mmh. Lets see how I will feel and what I’ll say after I see Robbie live this summer.
For some reason I didn’t follow Robbie’s career all that closely in the last decade or so and didn’t listen to all of the new releases. I sort of knew he was still around, but that’s about it. But I did watch the Netflix documentary last year and felt renewed apprecation for him, because he was so open about his mental health issues and struggles and I could definitely relate to that.
When I heard about the “Better Man” movie a few months ago, I admit I was hesitant. Biopic about a person still very much here and alive and not anywhere near the end of his career (I hope)? Really? When I found out, that he’s being played by a CGI animated monkey, I thought it was such a ludicrous gimmicky attention seeking idea and wasn’t really interested.
But then I saw the trailer and read more about the reasons behind this choice and it started to make sense to me. To portray him how he saw / sees himself. As an outsider, never fitting in, always being different and therefor unlovable. I knew THAT feeling all too well.
Earlier this week I went to see the movie and I absolutely loved it. I might even go again, which I haven’t been inclined to do with any movie in the last decade or even longer. To me the monkey (outsider) imagery worked very well. After seeing the movie I personally think that the central message of always feeling on the outside and less than, wouldn’t have worked quite as well with a human actor playing him. Of course the monkey is anthropomorphized in his movements and his facial expressions. As far as I know the eyes (in close up anyway) are Robbie’s real eyes and there were a few mannerisms I thought I’d recognize from real human Robbie. Anyway, only a few scenes in and you don’t care it’s a monkey anymore and just want to hug the tiny boy being bullied on the schoolyard.
As also mentioned above I only sort of followed Robbie’s career, so I wasn’t up-to-date with the timeline of his life: relationships, music releases, events like tours or award shows and such. I think for the movie they took the liberty to move some of it around around, condense and change bits to make it work as narrative arc of the movie, which was fine by me. But I was wondering if the movie portrayed one of the relationships realistically. Because I had vague memories from something said on a live album or video footage that this relationship played out differently than the movie made me believe for the longest time. What can I say, my memories were right and it is a happy ending movie and I cried soooo much by the end. Seriously, so much!
I think and am not ashamed to admit that typing all this makes me want to watch it all over again and I most probably will do that one more time next week, as long as the non-dubbed version is still running in the movie theatre around here.
