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Culprit Robbie Williams
Title Old Before I Die
Year 1997
Written by Desmond Child, Eric Bazillian and Robbie Williams
Submitted by Dominic

One of Robbie's better offerings, "Old Before I Die" has a very Oasis feel to it, no doubt because at the time he was keen to shed his Take That image and be seen as a credible "bad boy of pop". This also involved smoking a lot of cigarettes and – gasp – getting some tattoos.

All that, however, did nothing to overcome an extraordinary lack of clutch control as the song kangaroo-hops its way (no, that's not your audio player getting stuck) towards a new and distant key.

Interesting, isn't it, that "My Generation", whose "Hope I die before I get old" lyrics inspired this song, itself suffers from a succession of truck driver's gear changes. I wonder if this is a deliberate tribute?

Listen to the MP3Listen!

Related stuff

This was a classic case of a pop star proudly proclaiming via their PR department that "Hey, I co-wrote some of the songs on my new album." It seems very likely that the person responsible for the key shift was Desmond Child, who co-wrote "Livin' On A Prayer".