Escapology (album)
Encyclopedia

Background

In 2002, Williams signed a record-breaking £80 million contract with EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

. The contract featured a number of provisos, including the label ceding greater creative control to the artist and a commitment to breaking Williams in the American market. In return, EMI affirmed they would benefit from a cut of Williams' non-recording activities, including touring, publishing, and merchandising, thus protecting the company from any commercial downturn in the singer's album sales. So far it has become the biggest music deal in British history. Williams began working on what would be his fifth studio album, after a year out from recording. The album heralded a new era for Williams, as he had taken a more active role in the making of the album, giving an indication of his growing confidence in the studio. "One Fine Day", "Nan's Song" and "Come Undone" were the first three songs that Robbie wrote without Guy Chambers
Guy Chambers
Guy Chambers is an English songwriter and record producer, perhaps best known for his long partnership with Robbie Williams.- Biography :...

' input. The majority of the album was recorded in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. "Escapology" was arguably conceived as a concept album, due to it's lyrical content being totally reflective of Williams' life as a popstar. The album focuses on his his hopes and fears. Williams stated: "Half of the album it is written from the standpoint of 'Look, this is really me with my tears of a clown. Do they love me or hate me?' The rest of it is about somebody that I have to think I am to get up onstage. Because little me wouldn't get up there. It's too scary!" As the contract stated, EMI attempted to break Williams in the American market, and such, asked him to tweak Escapology to suit the market. As such, the American release shuffles the song order, removes "Song 3", "Hot Fudge", "Cursed", and one hidden track, and adding "Get A Little High" and "One Fine Day", and making "How Peculiar (Reprise)" a main album track instead of a hidden track. Williams promoted the album on shows such as Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...

, Last Call with Carson Daly
Last Call with Carson Daly
Last Call with Carson Daly is an American late night talk show that is broadcast on NBC. The show is hosted by Carson Daly, the half-hour show featuring celebrity interviews, documentary-style coverage of a topic, and musical performances. Last Call airs weeknights at 1:35 a.m. Eastern / 12:35 a.m....

 and the Tonight Show. This version of the album won the award for 'Best Album by a Solo Male' in the International Category at the Oye! Awards in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

.

Reception

Initial critical response to Escapology was generally mixed. Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

, which assigns a normalized
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...

 rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...

 score of 53, based on 11 reviews.

Success

When Escapology was released in late 2002, it hit number-one in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Austria. It also reached the top ten in other European countries. However, it failed to make an impact in the United States, only reaching number forty-three on the Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

Albums Chart. Escapology became the best selling album of 2002 in the United Kingdom, selling 1.2 million copies, and being certified 6× Platinum by the BPI in December 2003, becoming the sixtieth best selling album of all time in the UK.

Singles

  • "Feel
    Feel (Robbie Williams song)
    "Feel" is a song by British singer-songwriter Robbie Williams. It was released on December 2, 2002 as the lead single from his fifth studio album, Escapology...

    ", a track written by Williams and Chambers, was released as the album's first single. Originally only recorded as a demo in 1999, Williams attempted to re-recorded the vocals in 2002, however, felt unsatisfied with the result, and thus decided to issue the original demo version instead. When the single was released in late 2002, it became Williams' biggest international hit, selling over 4 million units worldwide and reaching the top ten in every European country. It also topped the charts in Argentina, Italy
    Italy
    Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

    , Hungary
    Hungary
    Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

    , Latvia, Portugal
    Portugal
    Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

    , Mexico, and the Netherlands
    Netherlands
    The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

    . The success of the song was so massive that it spent 54 weeks inside the Canadian charts. The video for the song received attention in the United States, due to Hollywood actress Daryl Hannah
    Daryl Hannah
    Daryl Christine Hannah is an American film actress. After making her screen debut in 1978, Hannah starred in a number of Hollywood films throughout the 1980s, notably Blade Runner, Splash, Wall Street and Roxanne and Kill Bill.-Early life:Hannah was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Susan...

     featuring as his love interest, leading radio stations to play the track.

  • "Come Undone", the album's second single, became a top ten hit around the world. However, the video for the song was heavily censored by MTV Networks for depicting Williams having three-way sex with two women. The video also highlighted graphic images of people vomiting and fist fighting, a cockroach crawling out of a person's mouth, and close-up shots of maggots, snakes and insects in close contact with the party goers in the video. The uncensored version of the video was released via a DVD Single
    DVD single
    A DVD single is a music single in the form of a DVD. The format was introduced in the late 1990s/early 2000s as a replacement for the VHS single...

     in Europe, and was also included on the Enhanced CD
    Enhanced CD
    Enhanced CD, also known as CD Extra and CD Plus, is a certification mark of the Recording Industry Association of America for various technologies that combine audio and computer data for use in both Compact Disc and CD-ROM players....

     Single. BBC
    BBC
    The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

     Radio 2 also banned the song for its explicit content. During such furors, it was confirmed that Williams and Guy Chambers were to officially part ways.

  • "Something Beautiful
    Something Beautiful
    "Something Beautiful" is a song by British pop singer Robbie Williams, it was released as the third single from his album Escapology in the summer of 2003.-Music video:...

    ", a song which was first offered to Tom Jones
    Tom Jones (singer)
    Sir Thomas John Woodward, OBE , known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer.Since the mid 1960s, Jones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, techno, soul and gospel – and sold over 100 million records...

    , was released as the album's third single. After given to Williams, it was reworked and heavily remixed. The single was released in the summer of 2003, and while it hit the top ten in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland and Denmark, it failed to make an impact in the world charts. The video featured a casting in which people from all over Europe contested to win the chance to perform as Robbie Williams at the end of the video. The three winners had the chance to meet Robbie, and three different versions of the video were released to different parts of the world featuring a different winner.

  • "Sexed Up
    Sexed Up
    "Sexed Up" is a song by British pop singer Robbie Williams, released as the fourth and last single from his album Escapology in late 2003. It was originally recorded for Natalie Imbruglia who turned it down and was later released in 1998 in demo form as the b-side to his single "No Regrets".-Chart...

    " was released as the album's fourth and final single, becoming another top ten single for Williams in the United Kingdom. However, it failed to make an impact in the charts elsewhere.

Track listing

Charts

Country Peak position
Argentina 2
Australia 3
Austria 1
European Top 100 Albums
European Top 100 Albums
The European Top 100 Albums chart is the European adaptation of the Billboard 200 albums chart. It was created in March 1984.The European Top 100 Albums, commonly referred to as Eurochart Top 100 Albums shows the sales of an act in 19 European countries based on IFPI data.The European Top 100...

1
Belgium (Vl) 1
Belgium (Wa) 3
Denmark 1
Finland 1
France 3
Germany 1
Greece 1
Hungary 9
Italy 2
Mexico 3
Netherlands 1
Norway 1
New Zealand 3
Portugal 3
Sweden 1
Switzerland 1
United Kingdom 1
United States 43


Certifications

Decade-End Sales

2000–2009 Peak
position
UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

23
German Albums Chart 5
2002 Peak
position
UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

1
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