Feel
Robbie Williams
How to study this song
The card for “Feel” is built from 46 study entries at A2-: 16 English words, 5 adjectives and 25 verb forms. Begin with hand, role and God: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. This one leans on its verbs: 25 distinct forms against 5 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hand | mano | mano | main | mão | hand | Hand |
| role | papel | ruolo | rôle | papel | rol | Rolle |
| God | Dios | Dio | Dieu | Deus | God | Gott |
This card holds 13 more words. You meet them when you play the song.
Adjectives
What this song teaches you
Level · A2-
- Vocabulary words
- 16
- Adjectives
- 5
- Word combos
- 12
- Expressions
- 11
- Verb forms
- 31
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Feel» is a pop rock ballad by the English singer Robbie Williams, written with his long-time partner Guy Chambers and produced by Chambers and Steve Power. It was released on 2 December 2002 by Chrysalis as the first single from his fifth studio album, «Escapology», which had come out two weeks earlier. The album version lasts a little over four minutes; a shorter edit was prepared for radio.
The song was born years before the album. According to the fan database rwdb.info, it started in a spontaneous studio session: Chambers played a sad phrase on the piano and Williams improvised words about depression and exhaustion. Williams later said that the day he wrote it was probably the saddest day of his life. A demo was recorded in 1999, when he was at the height of his fame after «Angels», «Millennium» and «Rock DJ».
The most famous detail of «Feel» is that the voice on the record is that demo. Both Wikipedia articles, on the song and on the album, explain that Williams tried to sing it again in 2002 for «Escapology», which was mostly recorded in Los Angeles, but was not happy with the new takes. He felt he could not sing it as well as on the original day, so the producers built the finished track around the old vocal. The fan site sums it up with his own words: the vocal you hear is the demo.
That choice explains the sound of the song. It begins almost bare, with piano and a fragile voice, and grows slowly towards a big cinematic ending with strings by the London Session Orchestra, slide guitars and soft gospel-style backing voices. The raw, slightly tired tone of the demo fits the subject better than a polished studio performance would have done.
The lyric is a confession. The narrator feels lost in the part that fame has given him and admits that he does not understand his own thoughts. He says that he would like to make contact with other people and that he talks to God, who only seems amused by his plans. What he really wants is simple: to experience a love that is genuine and to feel at home in his own life. Instead, he feels that all the energy inside him is being wasted.
The middle of the song is darker and very honest. He explains that he does not want to die, but that he is not enthusiastic about living either. He confesses that he plans his escape before a relationship even starts, and that fear keeps him running away from everything, even from himself. The final part describes an emptiness inside him that, he says, anyone can read in his face. Because of these themes, many listeners see «Feel» as one of the most personal songs Williams ever recorded about loneliness and depression.