For its first ten or so years, Robbie Williams' solo career was a whirlwind that never stopped. Its triumphs are hinted at by the statistics: over 55 million albums sold (of Life Thru a Lens, 1997; I've Been Expecting You, 1998; Sing When You're Winning, 2000; Swing When You're Winning, 2001; Escapology, 2002; Live At Knebworth, 2003; Greatest Hits, 2004; Intensive Care, 2005 and Rudebox, 2006), more Brit awards than any other act in history (15), the three nights at Knebworth in 2003 in front of 375,000 people; the most tickets ever sold in one day (1.6 million, for his 2006 Close Encounters tour), and so on. But the impact he has made – through his songs, and his singing, and his performances, and his personality – is far beyond that.

That impact endures, and grows, but for a while it has done so without Robbie Williams' active participation. After the Close Encounters tour finished in December 2006, he made the decision that it was time to disappear for a while. “I had to have a rest,” he says. He had barely paused for breath since joining Take That as an impish 15-year-old from Stoke-on-Trent in 1989, “I was very fortunate to get my breakthrough when I was really young – a lot of people don't get that breakthrough until they're 27, 28, maybe 30. I hammered it for year after year: making music…promoting…touring…making music…promoting…touring. It was time for me to take stock and look at who I am without all of that.” But it was only the public world of being a pop star he had decided to sidestep for a while, not music. Even as he grew a beard, stayed home and retired from sober evenings out at bars and nightclubs (“those places never appealed to me – I was just finding someone to stay in with”), he never stopped working on new songs.

For the most part, Reality Killed The Video Star was written in Robbie's home studio in Los Angeles and recorded in London. Amongst those who have collaborated on the songwriting, in a variety of ways, are Kelvin Andrews & Danny Spencer, Brandon Christy, Richard Spencer and Scott Rudin, Chaz Jankel, Guy Chambers and Fil Eisler. The album is produced by the legendary Trevor Horn. “He's added something to the record that I haven't had on previous records - his genius,” Robbie says. “I just think it sounds big – track after track after track.”

Its stylistic range is broad and exuberant, as Robbie Williams' albums have been from the very first. “I have a wide range of tastes,” he says. “I wasn't aware that you couldn't do that, or that you might not be able to. And with every case there's an exception to the rule, and I seem to have been that for a while. And I quite like being an exception to the rule – to any rule going.” The songs' tone and topics veer widely as well, from the apocalyptic conspiracy-laced first single “Bodies” (“it's the modern middle ages,” he sings) to a hymn for one fallen (“Morning Sun”); from today's fame epidemic (“Starstruck”) to, in “Won't Do That To You”, the most traditional subject of all: “my very first love song.” Some he's still working out for himself – “a load of songs that I sing happen to me in the future,” he observes – and some come from finally having a little time to reflect: “Spending a bit of time on the planet, and notching up a few years between the start of my career and now, it's kind of me looking back and going, ‘F***ing hell. Where did all that time go? What happened?' I still feel 23. Nothing's changed. Everything's changed.”

On November 9, 2009, the results of all this, his first album in three years, will be released, and he's ready. “I want to do it now,” he says. “What it means to me is that I'm at a turning point in my career. This next record decides my path. There's been a few great songs here and there, along the way. But you just forget. You forget what you've done. It's all in the past. I'm a bit scared, because I haven't done anything for three years, but then again I'm always scared when an album comes out – that's just me. I'm looking forward to going and singing it at people and seeing what their reaction is. I want them to feel elated, I want them to dance, I want them to forget about who they are and where they are for fifty minutes – and, within those fifty minutes of them forgetting who they are, I also want them to relate. You can never be sure what it is to people until it comes out, but I believe that it's magic. I do think that is an amazing album. It's a record that I'm very fond of, very proud of – I think it's brilliant and I want a lot of people to agree with me. I want it to be the record that, if they think of Robbie Williams, they go, ‘Yeah, Reality Killed The Video Star'.”

Robbie Williams releases his new single, “Bodies,” on October 12, followed by his new album Reality Killed The Video Star on November 9.