Songfacts®:

• "Rocket" is Robbie Williams doing that very Robbie Williams thing where he stands in the middle of the room, looks at his own career, shrugs, grins, and turns the whole lot into a chorus you can shout in a car. It's a self-aware meditation on fame, survival, and momentum. When he sings, "I just wanna be your rocket," he's talking about propulsion, spectacle, and the slightly reckless willingness to strap himself to the noise and see what happens. This is the same man who sang about "his guardian angel" on Earth, survived being a "Rock DJ," and learned the hard way what happens when you let yourself entertain the masses; now he's volunteering to be the ignition.
• "Rocket" barrels into harder territory than most of Williams' work, landing somewhere between Britpop swagger and stadium-sized hard rock. Helping with that is guitarist Tony Iommi, whose signature metallic riffs and solos give "Rocket" a Black Sabbath-adjacent crunch that firmly anchors it in rock territory. Adding further credibility from the Department of Loud Legends is Glenn Hughes, who supplies background vocals. "It's adrenaline-filled and balls-to-the-wall," Williams told NME.
• Williams wrote the song with Iommi, his drummer Karl Brazil, and guitarist Tom Longworth, a longstanding member of Williams' live band. Brazil and Longworth produced the track with Sam Miller.
• The music video, directed by Charlie Lightening (Arcade Fire, Liam Gallagher), was shot on 16mm film, giving it a gritty, 1970s punk feel. Williams stalks through London landmarks wearing red tartan trousers, a heavy chain necklace and a graffiti-covered leather biker jacket, trailed by a choreographed flash mob. Intercut scenes show Iommi back in his home city of Birmingham, grounding the chaos in industrial rock heritage.
  
  The video's concept originated from Williams' idea of creating a viral moment through public performance, which Lightening elevated into a more structured narrative capturing the song's raw energy.
• "Rocket" was released on May 21, 2025, as the lead single and opening track from Williams' 13th album, Britpop. "I set out to create the album that I wanted to write and release after I left Take That in 1995," Williams explained. "It was the peak of Britpop and a golden age for British music."
  
  In other words, this is the album he's been circling ever since he first walked out of the boyband and straight into "Old Before I Die."
• Robbie dropped a softer, ballad-style reworking of the song titled "Pocket Rocket" on June 13, 2025. The new version shifts the focus from Williams to a woman.
• Originally slated for October 10, 2025, then pushed to early 2026, the Britpop album was delayed to avoid competing with Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl. Williams was refreshingly honest about it; he wanted a 16th #1 album in the UK, surpassing The Beatles as the act with the most UK #1 albums. "It's outside of my family, my kids and my wife, the most important thing to me in the world," he told BBC Radio 2's Scott Mills.
  
  The strategy worked. Britpop was surprise-released digitally on January 16, 2025, shot straight to #1, and pushed Williams past The Beatles as the act with the most UK #1 albums. Twelve solo albums, two greatest hits collections, his XXV compilation, and the Better Man soundtrack had already topped the charts. "Rocket" didn't just launch an album, it lit the fuse on a record-breaking run.