English singer-songwriter Robbie Williams was born 51 years ago as Robert Peter Williams in Stoke-on-Trent, is married and has 4 children.
At school, he showed interest in theatre and performed in numerous plays. When Robbie was 16, his mum saw an advert stating that they were looking for guys to form a boy band and encouraged him to audition for it. As a matter of fact, he was successful and became a member of the famous pop group ‘Take That’. After some time, however, conflicts began to arise with the other band members in view of Williams’ disagreements about the work as well as his drug and alcohol abuse. He was advised that their upcoming tour would be done without him, and that was exactly what happened, with him leaving the group after 5 years. A few months later, ‘Take That’ disbanded but reunited in 2006.
In 1996, Robbie embarked on a solo career by releasing a cover version of the track ‘Freedom’ by George Michael, which placed 2nd on the UK Singles Chart. His debut album came out the following year, and featured the international hit ‘Angels’ and which is also his best-selling single. Since then, Williams had 11 more studio albums, 50 singles as lead artist and 15 as featured artist, excluding promotional singles, live and compilations albums. All his albums except one peaked to first place in his native UK. Also, he had 7 UK number one hits namely ‘Millennium’, ‘She’s the One’, ‘Rock DJ’, ‘Eternity/the Road to Mandalay’, ‘Somethin’ Stupid’, ‘Radio’ and ‘Candy’.
Over the years, Robbie has collaborated with various other artists like Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and Queen. Apart from music, he published 2 books, launched a radio show, acted as guest vocal coach on a TV show, developed a clothing line, co-wrote music and lyrics for a theatrical play, recorded a song for a video game and founded a football team
Robbie is also a philanthropist and has created a charity in his home town with the aim of ameliorating its conditions and helping the disadvantaged ones financially. Moreover, he is the patron of a children’s institution which aids terminally ill kids and also organises charitable football matches.
During his career so far, Williams won numerous awards including a record of 18 Brit and 12 Echo Music Prize, rendering him the only artist who succeeded in winning that amount of awards. He has recorded around 300 songs and has worldwide estimated sales of more than 77 million records.
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