Swing When You're Winning

This is one of my favorite music albums: Robbie Williams sings the Jazz classics. The name of the album is reminiscent of his previous Sing When You're Winning, and you can't stop from swinging when you listen to this album. I don't fancy Robbie Williams' pop songs, but I was stunned when I first listened to this album at HMV. At one point I was playing this album in my car, and Jacopo complained that this guy was faking Frank Sinatra. I said to him that Frank Sinatra was a great Jazz singer, but Robbie Williams had a even better voice and talent for Jazz.

This album was released in 2001 and was the 4th solo album of Robbie Williams'. It is in fact the dream-comes-true of his - RW himself is a life-long admirer of Frank Sinatra. He even did the recording at the Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, Sinatra's favorite studio. In this album, RW covers Sinatra's Mack the Knife, Do Nothing till you Hear from Me, One for my Baby, Something Stupid (FS duets with his daughter Nancy Sinatra), and a "live duet" with FS in It was a very Good Year. There are songs from other famous Jazz singers, such as Beyond the Sea (my favorite) by Bob Darin. In only 2 weeks, 2 millions copies of the album had been sold in Europe.

With this album, RW earned the honor to perform in the Royal Albert Hall in London. I didn't know how prestigious the Royal Albert Hall was before I saw the DVD (named Robbie Williams - Live at the Albert) - men in Tuxedos and womens in evening dresses at round tables with champaign in their hands, and the band sitting in front of the stage was the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In this live performance, RW sang all the songs in the album, plus a few more classics. RW's cover of Frank Sinatra's My Way at the finale was literally moving. You can tell he is enjoying the show, not performing. His unorthodoxal personality gives him the charm that other artists don't possess. He dared smoking cigarette on the stage in the Albert Hall!

It is rumoring that the sequel of Swing When You're Winning is being recorded and to be release at the end of this year, bearing the name "Let's Swing Again". Man... It's gonna be an event.