Robbie Williams Covers Wet Leg, Delays Album So As Not To Compete With Taylor Swift

Robbie Williams has always been a much bigger deal in the UK than in the US, but even overseas, he has to navigate his career around the obstacle that is Taylor Swift like anyone else. As Billboard reports, the veteran British pop star played his smallest-ever ticketed show Thursday night at the 600-capacity London club Camden’s Dingwalls. He used the intimate underplay to perform his debut album Life Thru A Lens in full, after which he played songs from his upcoming album Britpop. During the gig, Williams revealed that the show was originally scheduled to coincide with the release of the new LP, but he pushed back the release date to February to avoid competing with Taylor Swift’s new album The Life Of A Showgirl.

People at the Camden’s Dingwalls gig had to store their phones in Yondr pouches to prevent filming of the new material, but there is some new performance footage of Williams online today. In the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, he covered Wet Leg’s 2021 breakthrough hit “Chaise Longue,” tweaking the lyrics to refer to his own career, e.g. “I joined Take That, got a pop star degree.” The line “I got the big D” lands differently coming from him. So does “Would you like us to assign someone to worry your mother,” actually.

Watch below.