Feel (Better Man)

About

Feel opens the soundtrack to Better Man, reimagined under the direction of composer Dan Romer. Originally released in 2002 on Escapology, the song serves as a central emotional motif in Michael Gracey’s biopic, appearing early in the film to underscore young Robbie’s loneliness and his longing for connection. The new recording replaces the stadium-scale production of the original with an intimate orchestral and piano arrangement, accentuating the vulnerability at the core of the lyric.

The scene it accompanies—Robbie as a child singing in the bath as light shines across the water—sets the tone for the film’s balance of realism and fantasy. Carter Williams, playing the young Robbie, performs the song’s opening lines with delicate restraint before Adam Tucker and Williams’s own vocal take over in later sequences. Romer’s orchestration softens the rhythm and places greater emphasis on strings and ambient sound, aligning the track with the film’s dreamlike atmosphere.

The revised lyric fragments (“Feel the life ever after”) and the slowed tempo transform the song from existential pop anthem to a fragile reflection on self-worth. Within the film’s context, it becomes a dialogue between childhood innocence and the need for love that runs through the story.

“It just sets the thematic tone. That scene with ‘Come and hold my hand’ and ‘Not sure I understand’ shows everything he’s searching for.”Robbie Williams

Reimagined with cinematic nuance, Feel anchors the soundtrack’s emotional landscape. Its use in Better Man reframes one of Williams’s most iconic songs as the foundation of his own mythology—a child’s yearning that echoes throughout the film.