The Struts and Robbie Williams Capture the Mood of These Weird Times with ‘Strange Days’ (Listen)

Like the title of the new single suggests, these truly are “Strange Days” — and the collaborative anthem from The Struts and Robbie Williams sums things up quite well.

On Wednesday, English glam/rock/pop band the Struts shared their new song, a team-up with Mr. Williams, one of the most successful pop stars of the past few decades on a global scale (United States excluded, of course, though he’s been working on that with some excellent pre-pandemic shows in Las Vegas).

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The midtempo number features shared vocals from Luke Spiller of the Struts and Robbie Williams, and was the result of a collaboration that came about during the COVID-19 pandemic … more on that later:

Here’s how the song came about:

“I was doing Quarantine Radio and Robbie hit me up out of the blue asking if we could talk,” explains Spiller, referring to the Instagram Live show launched by The Struts in the early days of lockdown. “We ended up Face-Timing for about two hours the first time we’d ever spoken, talking about life and music and UFOs and everything else you can think of. I asked if he’d like to work together at some point, and while we were making the album he graciously let us come over and record him singing on his front porch.”
 
Robbie Williams notes, “We did a vocal for a wonderful song that has been gifted my way. It’s been an absolute pleasure and a privilege to listen to this man sing. It’s great to be a fan of someone and then a part of this recording. It’s like having a hero here and I genuinely mean that.

“Strange Days” is the title track from the Struts’ forthcoming album, which will be released on Oct. 16.

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Ladies and gentlemen, today we are very pleased to announce our new single and new album, STRANGE DAYS. We are honoured to have one of our musical heroes, the legendary @RobbieWilliams, featured on the title track which debuted today on @bbcradio2 and will be available to stream and download everywhere at 5pm UK/12pm ET/9am PT. Finding all of our grand plans for 2020 canceled or postponed early this year, we gathered together safely in the studio and wrote and recorded the entire album in just ten days. It was undoubtedly a magical ten days for us—and we hope when you hear the album, it gives you a taste of that magic too. STRANGE DAYS will be available 16th October and album preorders will be available beginning 6pm UK/1pm ET/10am PT at thestruts.com. Thank you all so much for your continued support and we hope these songs bring you some joy in these Strange Days x

A post shared by The Struts (@thestruts) on Sep 2, 2020 at 8:36am PDT

For those in the U.K. and Europe, the Struts and Robbie Williams will be performing the song this weekend:

The Struts and Robbie Williams will be performing ‘Strange Days’ on Soccer Aid for Unicef live on ITV this coming Sunday – which is taking place at Manchester United’s Old Trafford ground. Soccer Aid for Unicef started in 2006 and is the world’s biggest charity football match. Since its launch it has raised over £38million for Unicef, with 2019’s event raising a record breaking £7.9million. Soccer Aid for Unicef airs on Sunday 6^th September at 6.30pm on ITV and STV.

“Strange Days” is the second song released from the Struts recently, following “Another Hit of Showmanship,” featuring Albert Hammond Jr. of the Strokes: