The Singles Jukebox

Accurate chronicler of Russian partytime, or just a twat? Well…

[Video][Website]
[3.33]

Olivia Rafferty: I know the line “put a doll inside a doll” is supposed to be some kind of cheeky “Robbie Williams Innuendo,” but matched against the calibre of the rest of the song, it just sounds like an embarrassingly inane fascination with the basic concept of Russian nesting dolls. The only good thing about this track is the way that “Louboutin,” “Rasputin” and “highfalutin” all play with the idea of name-dropping Putin, but don’t.
[2]

Iain Mew: I thought after the last couple of albums that Robbie was settling into mediocrity, but apparently not, because here he is merging the sublime and ridiculous on a whole new scale. I generally love pop so ambitiously and maximally stuffed, and even here when it only works 75% of the time, what a 75%! Where to start? Let’s go with the Prokofiev sample, and two things that make it work so well. First, there’s the way that it’s cut to never resolve, turning it into a fidgety juggling act, the song’s mood writ large. Second, thanks to The Apprentice I associate that music with helicopter shots of Canary Wharf skyscrapers, turning the song from just finger-pointing at Russian oligarchs to something which points fingers inwards to City excess too. And being a Robbie Williams song, it points further inwards still, because alongside throwing around Putin homophones like Georgia in 2009, there’s the promote/emote line which has to be himself, or at least his go-to character. Even when playing Roman Abramovich, he’s playing Robbie Williams playing Roman Abramovich playing etc., vulnerability wrapped up in a series of performative layers that just exaggerate its form (no wonder he’s so big on nesting doll imagery). As the bare focus of some of his songs or turned into self-pity, that act has been tiresome, but as the gravitational centre for something as overblown and exciting as “Party Like a Russian” and its “put a bank inside a car inside a plane inside a boat,” it’s a powerful force.
[9]

Alfred Soto: “Robbie Williams” is a fun idea to entertain if you’re drunk and American. This idea denotes an aging forever-young man of modest looks and talent who learned long ago how to lick the ears of gay men without ever going home with them or even an open mouthed kiss. This idea describes his approach to pop: theoretical, frustrating, not worth the trouble. With its thumping arena-ready pomposity and modest man’s idea of intelligence, “Party Like a Russian” is classic Williams. I’m not sure for whom “Party Like a Russian” was recorded — bet Neil Tennant taught him about Russian choirs and making “oligarchy” into a couplet.
[3]

Katie Gill: Robbie Williams is Anatole in Frank Wildhorn’s hit new musical War and Peace! Seriously, this sounds the villain song from a Broadway musical — and, as shown by my hypothetical Wildhorn show, not a GOOD musical. I mean, I adore it because it’s cheesy as hell, completely on-the-nose, and doesn’t even try to work “matryoshka” into the lyrics. But that doesn’t mean it’s any sort of good.
[3]

Kat Stevens: I saw Robbie perform this on the The Graham Norton Show, flanked by a backing band of severe women dressed as Nutcrackers, complete with pointe ballet shoes, miming along to Prokofiev. I forgave him the faux pas (Nutcracker is Tchaikovsky, dude!) as “The Dance of the Knights” is a total banger – Alan Sugar knew it, Sia knew it, the 1998 Olympic ice dance bronze medallists knew it. (Donald Trump doesn’t know it — apparently they use The O’Jays for the US version of the Apprentice.) I hear a 2-second snatch and immediately think of grandeur, turmoil, and the fear that your destiny is spiralling out of your control, though that might be because Alton Towers also used it to advertise rollercoasters in the 1990s. Robbie uses it to prop up a 3-minute caricature of oligarchal madness, complete with vodka and matryoshkas, but the sample is so strong that there’s very little room for his vocal. A missed opportunity really, as Robbie should have plenty of experience of that lurching freefall into love/chaos — perhaps too much experience. The only line that hits home is ‘I never ever smile unless I’ve something to promote‘. After delivering an excruciating dead-eyed anecdote for Graham on the sofa, that was the one bit of Robbie’s performance where he showed a bit of the old twinkle. 
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: Cultural chauvinism, ethnic comedy yuks… and Brexit was supposed to have been a surprise?
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Anthony Easton: The use of the word “oligarch,” and the double or triple rhymes, and how vuglar and expensive this is, has an expansive, delightful, full throttled trash which I always love from Robbie Williams. He is not subtle, but neither is Versace, and both are genius. 
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: Politically problematic and lyrically stupid, and easily the worst single Robbie’s ever released.
[2]

Rebecca A. Gowns: He somehow combines every cartoonish stereotype about Russians into one abysmal set of pop lyrics. As if that wasn’t enough, he drags along a disembodied Prokofiev phrase and props it up in the chorus, like sticking a hand into an animal skin and using it like a puppet. The bridge takes it way over the top; a kind of self-aware campiness that makes me wince.
[1]

William John: Symptomatic perhaps of #BrexitBritain, this dirgey stomp reduces a nation to a handful of cultural references with a boorish lack of tact. I’m half-imagining an alternate Australian version with a chorus sampling GANGgajang and lyrics referencing boomerangs, “Fosters” and Crocodile Dundee, which wouldn’t cause me umbrage so much as slight bewilderment and disappointment at the brazen, reductive laziness. If the objective is to deride Russia and its people (which, despite press to the contrary, seems the only obvious conclusion), then could it be done with more depth than a geography project of a kindergartener?
[2]

Cassy Gress: I looked at the lyrics before I actually listened to this, and I thought, “What are the chances that despite how obnoxious these lyrics are, I’m going to find the song really catchy anyway?” It does have pieces that should go together really well (the general C&C Red Alert-ness of it, the stomping drums, the Prokofiev usage), but aside from the fact that it uses valid criticisms of Putin to criticize apparently the entire country, Robbie performs this with a wink and a nudge and a “ho ho, I’m so clever”, which grates hard after the first verse. It even silences itself every few bars for a “spasibo!”, like a manic punchline. I’ll add here that my in-laws emigrated to the US from the USSR 26 years ago, and my father-in-law just got out of the hospital with a destroyed liver, and he’s sitting at home deliriously reading tass.ru, and it’s not fucking funny.
[1]

Brad Shoup: Like a Romanian reggae-pop track on a Screw tape: the drums are dropped 20 feet, Robbie’s drunkstepping over the string figure. The jokes are, like, Broadway clever.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: And here I thought “no, you’re the puppet!” would be the stupidest Russia-related artifact of the week. This is so flagrantly awful on every possible level that I almost admire it.
[1]

Scott Mildenhall: Sure Robbie, why not? It really does seem that he recognises Rudebox as a triumph, not a travesty, and that is something to be thankful for. He’s long inured himself to accusations of self-parody, to the point that this is the sort of thing he — and only he — is expected to do. Who else would shout “spasíbo!” in the middle of a song? Combining “Dance of the Knights,” incessant rhymes, Robbieisms like “disco seduction,” a PSB-esque choir and a comical key change, this is the kitchen sink.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: On his best/worst album, Rudebox, Williams had a couple of songs with guest vocals from Lily Allen. Now I can’t tell if his smug cheeky chappy schtick was the template for her all along, or if he’s now independently become as awful as her.
[2]