Speaking Tongues

About

Speaking Tongues appears on Under the Radar Vol. 2 and was written by Robbie Williams, Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol and Scottish producer Show N Prove (Ellis Taylor), who also produced the track. The song revisits Williams’ chaotic youth in the mid-1990s, telling a surreal and often darkly comic story of his experiences in Ibiza while still a member of Take That. It fuses dance beats, rock swagger and rapid-fire lyrics into one of the album’s most unconventional moments.

The narrative, partly detailed in Williams’ autobiography Reveal, describes a brief, hedonistic trip involving drugs, danger and a supposed encounter with a reformed gangster who claimed to speak in tongues. Williams recalled, “I was in a swimming pool and had been up for a couple of days when a man told me Jesus had sent him to talk to me. I thought God had sent him.” The resulting breakdown became the basis of the song’s imagery, where spirituality and excess collide.

Musically, Speaking Tongues mirrors the confusion and mania of the story through its choppy electronic rhythm and distorted vocals. Lines such as “Everybody’s saying take that, take that, and I’m the cheeky fucker at the back” and “Before a disco biscuit, disco nap” blend humour and absurdity, offering a self-aware snapshot of fame and excess. The tone balances madness with insight, capturing the tension between rebellion and self-destruction.

“It’s about those few days in Ibiza when I completely lost it. A lot of people wanted to beat me up through the years. This one’s about that chaos.”Robbie Williams

Critics and fans have highlighted Speaking Tongues as one of the most eccentric and vivid tracks on Under the Radar Vol. 2. Its restless energy and manic storytelling reveal Williams’ knack for turning turbulent memories into inventive, darkly funny pop. The song stands as a reminder of his survival instinct and his ability to find art in the extremes of experience.