Robbie Williams' 'Tripping'

It’s the first verse:

First they ignore you.
Then laugh at you and hate you.
Then they fight you. Then you win.

Then what Robbie? Then what? He sings it as if this is a familiar situation for all of us: The old ignoring, laughing, hating, fighting before ultimately losing treatment, eh? Well I’ve seen that before and I’m ready for you.

He seems to be glossing over things a bit as well. Where are the details Robbie? Who is ignoring you? Why are they laughing? What form did the fight take? Was it a war of egos – is that how you won?

These are lyrics of a remarkably low standard. You might have written something similar in a school exercise book when you were fourteen, only you would have read them back and torn the page out and burnt it and then eaten the ashes and then buried your shit through gargantuan embarrassment. I don’t know whether Robbie wrote them, but he does sing them. If I’m embarrassed at the idea of having written them when I was fourteen – when I didn’t – why isn’t Robbie hiding his face for reading them out loud? And why hasn’t anyone laughed him out of town?

The verse ends:

When the truth dies, very bad things happen. They’re being heartless again.

Once again, you’re being overly specific here, Robbie. Need you have specified that the ‘bad things’ were ‘very bad’? There are likely to be children hearing this stuff, you don’t want to keep them from sleeping at night.