The Christmas Present


The Christmas Present is the 12th studio album by British singer-songwriter Robbie Williams, and his first studio album since 2016's The Heavy Entertainment Show. It was released on 22 November 2019, and features guest appearances from Tyson Fury, Rod Stewart, Jamie Cullum, Helene Fischer and Bryan Adams. Williams performed a pair of concerts dubbed the "Robbie Williams Christmas Party" at the SSE Arena on 16 and 17 December 2019 in promotion of the album.

Background

Williams began recording the album in June 2019, just before the final leg of his Wynn Las Vegas residency, and concluded in Vancouver in October 2019. Williams joked that he was going to call the album Achtung Bublé, a play on words of the U2 album "Achtung Baby", and in reference to Michael Bublé's "monopoly" on the Christmas music market, which he said "must end now".
The song "Bad Sharon", featuring Tyson Fury on guest vocals, was called a "favourite" to be the UK Christmas number one.
Williams initially aspired to cover "Fairytale of New York" as a duet with Britney Spears which the latter declined.

Critical reception

The Christmas Present received mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 52 based on 4 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Commercial performance

The Christmas Present opened at number two on the UK Albums Chart, behind Coldplay's Everyday Life. The album sold 67,000 copies in the UK during its first week, the same amount as Williams' previous album The Heavy Entertainment Show. Despite not getting to number one on the charts, Williams' had the fastest selling cassette release in over two decades. The Christmas Present sold over 10,000 cassettes in its first seven days of release. Halfway through its second week, Williams' album climbed to number one, outselling 's album by 5,000 copies and becoming Williams' 13th number one, tying Elvis Presley for the most UK number one albums. In its second week, 57,000 copies had been sold. Williams now ties Presley for the most #1's in a solo career, and has 17 number one albums when including his Take That career.
The Christmas Present opened at number two on the Australian music chart, behind Coldplay's Everyday Life. The following week, The Christmas Present became Williams' first number one album in Australia since Reality Killed the Video Star 10 years prior.

Track listing

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications