Christmas Number 1 Flashback: Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman - Somethin' Stupid

It's 20 years since Robbie scored his only solo(ish) Christmas Number 1

20 years ago, Robbie Williams scored his fifth Number 1, and his first to spend Christmas at the position, with a smoochsome version of Somethin’ Stupid.

It was the first track off Robbie’s fourth album Swing When You’re Winning, the ‘big band’ affair that he’d always dreamed of making and paid tribute to the likes of the Rat Pack and swingers of yore. That dream was realised, seeing as he’d gone from slightly worryingly unsuccessful ex-boyband member to the UK’s biggest star in the space of a couple of years, and he could do whatever he fancied at this point.

Robbie Williams & Nicole Kidman - Somethin' Stupid (2001)

As part of the idea to recreate the duet, Robbie required someone to duet with, and chose up-and-coming Australian singer Nicole Kidman, whose first chart hit was Come What May, a duet with Ewan MacGregor from Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge, had reached Number 27 in the Official Singles Chart a couple of months earlier, and she would follow-up her Robbie duet the following April with the Number 79 success of One Day I’ll Fly Away also from the film. Unfortunately, that was about the dimensions of her pop chart career, sadly.

Oh. Hang on, according to the internet, Nicole Kidman has done quite well as an actor.

However this hit made her the twelfth Australian artist to top the Official Singles Chart and the third to have won an Academy Award for Best Actress (after Barbra Streisand and Cher) which kinda makes up for not doing terribly well as a pop star.

Robbie Williams - Swing When You're Winning

Official Chart peak: 1
Chart sales: 2.43 million (8x Platinum)

A change in lane for the ever-reliable showman, Robbie Williams' fourth album is a surprising LP of covers of, you guessed it, swing classics. It's clearly a space he feels comfortable in tooo - returning to the genre for a sequel with 2013's Swings Both Ways, which also hit Number 1. Included is Robbie's Number 1 hit with Nicole Kidman Somethin' Stupid, which was crowned Christmas Number 1, as well as the last chart-topper of the year too.

Swing When You’re Winning – a play on his previous long-player’s title Sing When You’re Winning – became one of Robbie’s biggest-selling albums, spending seven weeks a-top the Official Albums Chart, as well as giving him the double of a Christmas Number 1 on both the singles and albums list, the first of four releases to occupy that coveted position, with 2002’s Escapology, 2004’s Greatest Hits and 2013’s Swings Both Ways. He’s had 13 Official Album Chart Number 1s, it was inevitable that a couple of them would spend Christmas in that slot.

MORE: Every Christmas Number 1 Album

Robbie also released a live DVD centered around the album that Christmas. Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, the DVD, entitled Live at the Albert, went on to become one of the biggest-selling DVDs in Europe and also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Long Form Video.

Somethin’ Stupid was originally a hit for father and daughter duo Frank and Nancy Sinatra in 1967, when it was a transatlantic chart-topper. Despite being a fairly big deal in the forties, fifties and sixties, it was Frank’s only second gold disc-selling single during his career at that point(!) The only other father and daughter duo to top the Official Chart came from Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne, whose Changes narrowly missed the Christmas Number 1 spot in 2003.

Robbie would be part of another Christmas Number 1, joining the cast of Band Aid 20, on the twentieth anniversary re-record of Do They Know It’s Christmas in 2004.

Overall Somethin’ Stupid has 491,000 UK chart sales, with 389,000 as pure sales and 11.5 million as streams, and was the 30th biggest-selling single of that year. It’s also Robbie’s seventh biggest solo single.

MORE: Robbie Williams' biggest-selling singles revealed

It was an eventful Christmas Top 10 that year. In at Number 2 was singer songwriter Gordon Haskell, whose How Wonderful You Are was a new entry, having become a Christmas Number 1 favourite after being picked up by BBC Radio 2. Gordon had been in mid-sixties psychedelic outfit Fleur de Lys as well as doing time in King Crimson.

Previous Number 1 Gotta Get Thru This by Daniel Bedingfield was at Number 3, Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder On The Dancefloor was down one place to Number 4 and Stereophonics’ Handbags and Gladrags rounded off the Top Five.

Elsewhere, the Top Ten had an international flavour, with Dutch pop act Hermes House Band and their cover of Country Roads at 10, and Belgium’s Ian Van Dahl and Will I at Number 7. And it wouldn’t be a Christmas Top 10 without some novelty turn, and this year it was pre-school TV gonks The Tweenies who had I Believe In Christmas at Number 9. Another actor who just missed out on the Christmas Top Ten was Kate Winslet, whose warlbesome What If dropped to Number 11 from 8 that week.