Robert Peter Williams (born 13 February 1974) is an English singer-songwriter and entertainer.

He
found fame as a member of the pop group Take That from 1989 to 1995, but achieved greater
commercial success with his solo career, beginning in 1997. Williams has released seven UK
number one singles and ten out of his eleven studio albums have reached number one in the UK. He
is the best-selling British solo artist in the United Kingdom and the best selling non-Latino artist in
Latin America. Six of his albums are among the top 100 biggest-selling albums in the United
Kingdom–four albums in the top 60–and in 2006 he entered the Guinness Book of World Records for
selling 1.6 million tickets of his Close Encounters Tour in a single day.[1]
Williams has received a record eighteen Brit Awards—winning Best British Male Artist four times,
two awards for Outstanding Contribution to Music and the 2017 Brits Icon for his "lasting impact on
British culture", and three MTV European Music Awards.[2][3] In 2004, he was inducted into the UK
Music Hall of Fame after being voted the "Greatest Artist of the 1990s". According to the British
Phonographic Industry (BPI), Williams has been certified for 19.8 million albums and 7.2 million
singles in the UK as a solo artist.[4] He is also one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having
sold 75 million records worldwide. Williams also topped the 2000–2010 UK airplay chart. His
three concerts at Knebworth in 2003 drew over 375,000 people, the UK’s biggest music event to that
point.[5] In 2014, he was awarded the freedom of his home town of Stoke-on-Trent, as well as having
a tourist trail created and streets named in his honour.