About
Spies is the second track on Robbie Williams’s forthcoming album Britpop and one of the first new songs to make an immediate impact during the 2024 Britpop Tour. Its full live debut at the Dingwalls showcase revealed a fast, guitar-driven track built around sharp pacing, a rising hook and a tightly locked rhythm section.
Developed with Williams’s current band, the arrangement leans into late-90s alternative textures: clipped guitars, driving percussion and a vocal line pushed forward in the mix. In the intimate Dingwalls setting, the lack of staging or screens emphasised its raw structure, turning the room into a high-energy crowd response within seconds of the chorus hitting.
Lyrically, Spies uses the language of surveillance and pressure to shape a song about pursuit and tension. Its repeat-driven chorus reinforces the idea of being watched or pushed, matching the urgency in its lead guitar pattern. Fans at early shows responded strongly to the chant-like lift of the refrain, which quickly established it as one of the set’s most reactive moments.
You won’t believe how many times the melody has changed in that chorus, because it sounded like the song that it still sounds like.Robbie Williams
This candid admission at Dingwalls referred to the track’s long evolution, with Williams acknowledging its melodic proximity to 1990s Britpop while framing it as a deliberate nod rather than imitation. Presented in such a close-up environment, Spies emerged as one of the defining stylistic anchors of Britpop, signalling the album’s guitar-led direction.
Lyrics
In your boutique
Nothing
Search on nothing
She
I went to sleep
And paid the priest
To keep watch over me
I paid the priest
To breath life into me
We used to stay up all night
Thinking we were all spies
Praying that tomorrow won't come
Shut your mouth and fight it
Take it out and lie it
Throw it up and
Won't you come?
Won't you come down?
Kicking the teeth
In a dead end street
And left me there to bleed
So don't compare
Cuz I don't care
For your insecurities
You come alive
When you see
The angels breathing ashes
We used to stay up all night
Thinking we were all spies
Praying that tomorrow won't come
Shut your mouth and fight it
Take it out and lie it
Throw it up and
Won't you come?
Won't you come down?
Running off your face
All over town
You're all a mistake
Cuz coming down...
We used to stay up all night
Thinking we were all spies
Praying that tomorrow won't come
Shut your mouth and fight it
Take it out and lie it
Throw it up and
Won't you come?
Won't you come down?
Credits
-
Vocalist
Robbie Williams -
Songwriter
Robbie Williams, Karl Brazil, Owen Parker, Martin Terefe -
Producer
Karl Brazil, Owen Parker, Martin Terefe, Sam Miller