29/01/2026

LYFE THURSDAY | JAN 29, 2026

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Malaysian Paper

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Robbie Williams dethrones The Beatles

o Pop star tops beloved band for most number one albums in UK

P OP superstar Robbie Williams has surpassed The Beatles as the artiste with the most number one albums in the history of the British charts, sales trackers said last Friday. The news came a week after Williams released Britpop , now officially his 16th UK chart-topping album. “He’s the one!” said the Official Charts Company, referencing the hit 1998 single She’s the One by the former Take That frontman. Since Williams, 51, started his chart-topping career with his 1997 solo debut, Life Thru a Lens , he has sold an estimated 20 million albums in the UK. Britpop is his first in seven years. “Not even the confident young 16-year-old from stoke-on-trent would have believed this were possible when he joined Take That Back in 1990. “But here he is, on top of the world, the UK’s number one album artiste – of all time,” Official Charts CEO Martin Talbot said in a statement. In his 35-year career, Williams has sold 80 million albums worldwide. The Beatles now stand in second place on the British album chart-topping list with 15, followed by the Rolling stones and Taylor Swift, tied with 14 and Elvis Presley with 13. – AFP JAPAN’S punk rock lawyer Akihiro Shima was belting out songs at a packed bar in Tokyo, sporting a mohawk and bright-red jacket, nine days after filing a landmark climate lawsuit. The 63-year-old rallied over 450 plaintiffs across Japan last month in a landmark lawsuit seeking damages from the central government over its alleged “grossly inadequate” response to climate change. For Shima, the suit is “the culmination of everything” he has spent years fighting for, first as a musician and then a lawyer. When the punk movement barrelled through Japan in the late 1970s, then-teenaged Shima was convinced he would “change society through rock-n-roll”, he told AFP. Decades later, he has lost none of his fervour. Roaring the lyrics Free Palestine and Dance in the street for your rights at a tiny, dimly-lit Tokyo bar in December: Shima lauded his latest legal battle between songs. “There are people spewing carbon dioxide because of their selfish lifestyles, while people who don’t live like this at all are seeing their islands on the verge of sinking,” he told audience members during the December performance. “Our future generations will be

Britpop , out now, features tracks including Rocket , Spies , Pretty Face and single All My Life . – PIC FROM ROBBIEWILLIAMS.COM

Japan punk rock lawyer spearheads climate justice fight the biggest victim,“ he said, eliciting a few nods. Superbly cool over the novel he thought: “As long as we remain hell-bent on pursuing materialism and an economic status, our planet won’t hold up.”

He became a household “radical”, chivvying his parents into replacing laundry detergents with bar soap and boycotting their car and got involved in other causes, from poverty to discrimination. Nude shoot For many years, music was his medium, and he embraced punk’s anti-establishment message enthusiastically. He and his musician friends even shot a CD cover nude in front of Japan’s parliament as a political protest. But as Shima turned 41, “it dawned on me that all my talk about social revolution or my niche band activity wasn’t changing society a bit”. He went back to school and became a lawyer in 2010, with his first lawsuit naming a polar bear as a plaintiff and arguing global warming amounts to pollution. After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, he led a lawsuit against major nuclear reactor suppliers and also formed a new band: “Shima Kick Jiro & No Nukes Rights.”

A longtime fan of Shima, 60-year-old caregiver Kumiko Aoki was among those inspired to join the lawsuit as a plaintiff. “The fact that he peppers his songs with clear messages like ‘no war’, I think that’s superbly cool,” she said. Aoki and her fellow plaintiffs argue that Japan’s “unconstitutional” inaction on climate change violates their constitutional rights to health and a peaceful life – and criticise Tokyo’s emissions reduction targets as unambitious. Japan is committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2035 and 73% by 2040 compared with 2013 levels – reaching net-zero by mid-century. Experts said the suit’s chances of winning are slim but it could raise awareness and stir public opinion. For Shima, the suit is the endpoint of a journey that began as a teenager, when he read the Japanese novel Compound Pollution a diatribe against industrial waste, agricultural chemicals and food additives. Shima explained as a teen poring

Shima, who spearheads a landmark climate change lawsuit in Japan, singing alongside fellow singer Yuko Nakano at a bar in Tokyo’s Ginza district. – PIC FROM AFP

Shima admitted he has not made songs about climate change yet. “I haven’t been able to find a way to make words like ‘climate‘ sound cool,” he said. Could his landmark lawsuit change that? “I will try,” he said with a smile. – AFP

Given his age, he acknowledged his latest lawsuit might be his last but believes it addresses profound questions about the future. “We intend for this lawsuit to prompt the question of what kind of society we want to live in 30 years from now,” he said. For all his environmental passion,