Robbie Williams "isn’t as good" as Ed Sheeran.
The ‘Go Gentle’ hitmaker feels he is not up to the "quality" of pop stars like Bruno Mars and the ‘Thinking Out Loud’ singer.
He told news.com.au: "There’s a quality that’s happening there with Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars that I’m not reproducing. I’m not as good as that. That’s where I should be.
"It’s because of Ed that I wrote 80 songs for this album. The first albums I’d write 17 songs. By the ‘Reality Killed the Video Star’ period, I’d just smoke a load of weed and come in and try and do things – if we did, great, if we didn’t, fine. So now I’m like OK, I get it."
Meanwhile, the 42-year-old singer – who has four-year-old Theodora and two-year-old Charlton with his wife Ayda Field – previously admitted he lives in fear that his career could be "taken away" from him.
He said: "I’m neurotic and I find things to worry about, and if there’s nothing to worry about, I make something up. When we got put together in Take That, we were told it wasn’t going to last, you’d be lucky if you got five years.
"Even during the sort of imperial phase of my career, I’d be thinking, ‘Is it stopping now?’ I’m 25 years in now, but I’m still sort of waiting for the rug to be pulled from underneath me, for it all to be put back in the box and taken away from me, and for me to be sent back to Stoke-on-Trent: ‘See, you’re right, this ultimately what you wanted, because you wanted to sabotage this, be found out for the charlatan you are, and you have to and work for your mum at the flower shop.’
"So I think, underneath everything, that’s what’s propelled me forward, and also made me terrified at the same time. Not that working for my mum in the flower shop would be a terrifying prospect, it’s just that my life’s better now."
Robbie Williams: I should be like Ed Sheeran
