Kylie's 11 album, out July

[EricMontreal22]

Really? I meant it with humour--we don't like all the same music (though I think, Agnes aside, we like similar writing). To try to explain why the synths--particularly when the piano comes in in the second verse--are so stunning, to someone who hates synths is... well, hard.

I don't think anything about the video looks cheap--you do. So? (But for cheapness' sake, Kelly Rowland's new video is craptastics--shame as the song is the best thing she's ever done)

[DRW50]

Going back to SAW, was Rick Astley criticized for being dull or something? This video seems like some attempt to show how fun he is. It's kind of exhausting.

[Sylph]

First, you need to give me your definition of writing and explain how can people not like the same music, but like similar writing.

Second, how on Earth can you love Slow? The irritating pulsating synth & drums beat that goes nowhere, the utter lack of any rhythmic movement, the horrible "summer", whispery pornovocals, the annoying pauses like dance with me... yeah... slow... D-i-s-m-a-l. It's just one of those faux-great songs that get served to people. Not to say anything about the complete lack of any melody, it's all just reciting some trashy lines.

I fail to see where is that "sophistication" you talk about.

Third, we do share much more than you think when it comes to music. I like disco, dance, synths. Don't you remember what I wrote just a few weeks, or maybe days ago when I said that it's not all synths I hate. Actually, thinking about it, it's wrong to say I hate synths per se, I just hate it when they overuse them or try to compensate for lack of ideas by pumping some interesting, new synth sounds into songs. This is actually something you always do : you forget what I once said and then I have to repeat it all over again.

You are right that it's not cheap, that was a wrong adjective. It's just that it really does seem like a 2010 update of Slow as far as the video goes. I have a problem with the white dove (too corny) and the white horse — too creepy instead of being... Bliss-inducing?

Kelly Rowland's song is nothing spectacular, but the video is deplorable.

P. S. The Times picked Kylie's song as the barbecue song of this summer.

[cct]

Slow is sex on a stick. Always makes me...

[Sylph]

cct, go write your thoughts on Lost finale. You forgot to do that.

[EricMontreal22]

I love when Sylph tracks us down in other threads

I promise to reply to your thoughts, though we'll prob have to agree to disagree (Slow have no melody? ).

Kylie's already in the UK top 10, with several weeks before physical single sales go on. She also made a surprise appearance at Splash in NYC (yes, a gay bar--shocking) where she and a group of underwear clad "dancers" (I use the term loosely, apparently it's just Splash's normalt group of oiled up gogo boys) performed All The Lovers and then she premiered a 10 minute megamix of 6 tracks from her album. It's on youtube, but barely worth listening to--bad sound, but the studio version of the megamix did leak today, and then immediately was pulled by EMI who have already sent several websites threatening letters (I never get this--it's like when they pull music videos from youtube--don't they see that all of this promotion can only do them good?). Anyway if anyone's interested in hearing it, I can help them out At first the mix sounded kinda samey to me (of course that's one of the points of megamixes--some tracks were sped up to fit the others, etc), but after 3 or so listens I'm starting to really like it, and feel really excited for the album.

And Digital Spy just did their review of the Kylie album that polarizes her fanbase the most--the beloved/hated, largely self written, Impossible Princess (which was kinda Kylie doing the Tori Amos thing but with more underground dance beats). I admit, I largely love the album and think it satands up well next to similar works like Madonna's Ray of Light (and Kylie, for all her odd metaphors, doesn't over-rely on cliches the way Madonna sometimes can). Of course it was a big flop in the UK, and arguably her biggest hit in Oz, and led to her return (to the happiness/chagrin of fans) as a campy dance/pop star a few years later.

(As much as I love it, I do admit it's one of her CDs I play the least--you really have to be in the right mood for a fairly dark, heavy album).

Kylie: Revisited #6: 'Impossible Princess'

Sunday, June 6 2010

By Nick Levine, Music

It's 1998. 'I Should Be So Lucky' was a decade and five albums ago. Kylie Minogue's now writing all her own lyrics, collaborating with the Manic Street Preachers and still managing to look cute-as-a-kitten-in-mittens on her album cover. What's more, as your Kylie: Revisited team have been discovering this week, that album might just be the most intriguing of her entire career.

Release date: March 23, 1998

Songwriting/production cast: Brothers In Rhythm (six tracks), Dave Ball & Ingo Vauk (three tracks), Dave Eringa & James Dean Bradfield (two tracks), Nick Dougan (one track)

Chart performance: 'Some Kind Of Bliss' became Minogue's least successful lead single ever, stalling outside the UK top 20, but follow-ups 'Did It Again' and 'Breathe' performed rather better, both peaking at number 14. When Impossible Princess finally came out – six months later than originally planned – it reached a creditable number ten on the UK albums chart, but went on the become Minogue's worst-selling album in the UK. However, it did earn a platinum award in her native Oz and make No.1 in... wait for it... Israel.

The sound: All over the dance-pop shop! Impossible Princess features everything from elegant electronica ('Breathe', 'Say Hey') to Motowny indie ('Some Kind Of Bliss, 'I Don't Need Anyone') to sitary guitar-pop ('Did It Again') to navel-gazing trip-hop ('Jump') to the toughest club cuts of Kylie's career ('Too Far', 'Drunk', 'Limbo'). Oh, and in 'Cowboy Style', it has a track that manages to sound a little bit Celtic and a little bit Middle Eastern. Petey W must have wept!

Standout track: Truth be told, this album lacks an absolute classic to match 'Confide In Me', but 'Breathe' – subtle but sneakily catchy with it – could be one of Min's most underrated singles (the single version was remixed to give it a slightly faster BPM for clubplay).

Hidden gem: Tucked right at the end, 'Dreams' is a gorgeous, string-swathed ballad with thought-provoking lyrics about an "impossible princess" who's striving to have it all. (For the record, she wasn't singing about Fergie.)

Lyrical nugget: Kylie wrote every single word on Impossible Princess, and she didn't squander the opportunity to bare a bit of soul, so we're entirely spoilt for choice this week. 'Too Far', 'Jump', 'Did It Again' and 'Dreams' all feature insight aplenty, but it's the all-consuming love affair of 'Drunk' that most sticks in our mind: "I'm not happy drunk til I'm drunken," Kylie sings on the chorus, "'Till you take all of me..."

Fascinating fact: In the UK and Ireland, the album's title was switched to Kylie Minogue - yes, just like the last one – following the death of Princess Diana in August '97. "I don't want to be constantly explaining or upsetting people, so we've taken the name off for now," the prudent popstrel explained at the time. "But I'd like to keep the option for putting it back in the future. That's what the album is called - it just won't be on the cover."

Our verdict: Hmm... at times Impossible Princess hangs together as well as a pair of mismatched curtains, and you couldn't accuse it of being stuffed with slap-you-round-the-chops pop stompers, but its myriad charms do begin to materialise after a few spins. Brave, revealing and rarely less than surprising, it's a key piece in the trickier-than-you-think jigsaw puzzle that is Kylie Minogue's recording career.

Star rating: **** (out of five)

Next week: Kylie throws away her old clothes and gets herself a better wardrobe – well, a nice pair of tight gold hot-pants anyway – for 2000's Light Years, an album as camp as cupcakes and Cosmos at Claridges with Joan Collins. And Christopher Biggins too.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

What top 10 are you talking about?

Because the song isn't in the top 10 in this week's official UK singles chart: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/singles/

Nor is it in the top 10 of the UK Itunes chart: http://www.apple.com/euro/itunes/charts/top10songs.html

[Chris B]

I love the sampler! Those songs are more accessible to mainstream radio than All the Lovers. I could actually see her pulling out a hit in the US if she releases the right track. I think All the Lovers will do the trip worldwide, but not in the US. And the sampler is good enough to hopefully carry the album through another long tour. I just hope she doesn't give up on the singles like she did in the UK. The One and In My Arms could've been huge if promoted better. Didn't they release the video for The One AFTER the single was released? Ugh! X was a trainwreck.

[EricMontreal22]

Sorry, shoulda been clearer. It's not even on sale on iTunes yet (it'll go on sale a week before the physical release).

It was on the UK radio airplay chart that is... although I'm stunned at Gaga's and Kate Perry's climbs. Hope they're not too much of a threat to K (I really dislike Katy perry's remake of Tik Tok--poor stuff). But yaye for my girl Alexandra Burke (even if I hate that they felt they had to add a rent-a-rapper for the single release of what was a great disco stomper). Still good on Kylie specially since BBC, oddly, weren't even sure they were going to A-list her...

01 03 07 Alexandra Burke Feat. Pitbull All Night Long 3439 3.74 45.65 12.97

02 06 04 Fyfe Dangerfield She's Always A Woman 2447 12.97 44.5 23.37

03 02 08 B.o.B Feat. Bruno Mars Nothin' On You 2032 10.62 44.16 7.68

04 01 10 Plan B She Said 3239 -3.97 43.99 -1.87

05 11 03 Katy Perry California Gurls 1443 33 40.59 32.09

06 51 01 Lady Gaga Alejandro 1149 0 40.13 0

07 05 05 Alicia Keys Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart 2369 15.79 39.95 4.66

08 12 03 Kylie Minogue All The Lovers 2213 15.92 39.39 30

09 07 04 Jason Derulo Ridin' Solo 1571 19.2 36.74 7.36

10 08 14 Scouting For Girls This Ain't A Love Song 2461 0.65 36.31 10.4

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I think the album will be big on the club circuit in the US, but I don't know about the mainstream, given her age and even though the US has been more acceptable to dance music in recent years, it doesn't seem like something US top 40 radio would spin in heavy rotation.

[EricMontreal22]

I think a big hit from this album in the US still isn't too likely, but I appreciate your optimism! But yeah, some really great sounding tunes--that have a cohesive enough sound to each other (I guess thanks to Price's final mix) yet complement each other well with different tones. She has said that some N America dates are pretty much certain to go with this tour this time--I guess the Fall mini tour did well enough.

I largely love X, I'm always defending it to fans, and it has some of my fave Kylie moments ever (The One, In My Arms, etc as mentioned). But the single choices were a mess, and how it was promoted as you say (even if it ended up being one of her best tours). In My Arms was meant to be the second single (it shoulda been the first), but then she performed Wow on X Factor and that was stupidly decided to be the UK single, but not the single elsewhere, bla bla--I'm sure you know all this.

Fans all wanted The One but she didn't even start doing it on her tour till the later legs, and the super cheap (but effective) video was done while she was on tour, but there was no physical release--and of course in the US they decided to go with the sweet, but not single choice, All I Need (which sounds like Janet Jackson really), as it was more R&B, and did a cheap video of that during her half hearted US promotion too-with her dancer Marco da Silva. Anyway ugh all such a mess (and I think to release an R&B style song for the US was a mistake too--she had her success with Outa My Head, even if it was a fluke, largely because it DIDN'T sound American...)

Agreed. She has a large enough fanbase that she will sell out a small tour, Canada is playing the song a bit but we've alwasy been warmer to Kylie and dance music than the US anyway. But Kylie is like Madonna, etc, in that everythign she releases tends to top the US dance charts almost on principle. I'm glad she hasn't made an album trying to get more mainstream US success...

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I thought Body Language had some moments where I thought it was almost tailor made to have a hybrid of typical Kylie songs and songs with a more US dance flare, but of course it didn't work out that well. I'm always surprised, at least in terms of sales, what a flop that album was in the UK, especially coming after her peak success with Fever.

[EricMontreal22]

I think most fans think that, I know I do. What I think was a mistake with Body Language is its lead single, Slow (which was a number one) made it sound like she was taking the electro dance of Fever into an even more extreme direction--when the rest of the album was kinda an electro/R&B album (with Red Blooded Woman's imitation of the Destiny's Child sound being the most blatant). The album's not bad--when I listen to it I always like it more than I expect to--it's very well produced and fiarly (here's that word again) sophisticated. But it's missing I think a lot of that fun people associated with Kylie and her music and it just doesn't feel much like her (ironically, that year her sister Dannii hit with an electro pop album, Neon Nights that I think many fans wish Kylie had done instead). But yeah, I think it proved that to try to tailor Kylie more to the US was a mistake...

[Chris B]

I think had Red Blooded Woman gotten the lead single push Body Language would've been huge in the UK and US. The video, performances and everything were great for that song. I remember when Slow stalled in the US she suddenly started pushing Red Blooded Woman but by that point it was too late to save the album. Well not too late in general, but too late for the amount of effort she was willing to put in.

[EricMontreal22]

It was obviously calculated at the American audience, so shoulda been the lead single. Still Slow was massive in the UK and Europe, and I don't think it was a poor lead single choice there except that (like 2 Hearts for X) as a lead single it didn't remotely do what a lead single should do--get people excited for a full album that will carry on that sound.

Also remember how upset many fans were that RBW was being made into a single--I used to post on the ridiculously Nazi ish Kylie forum, Say Hey (I'm now a mod at its spin off www.togerland.com which I admit has largely just become a forum for gay guys to gossip about music). The mod was so upset about RBW being a single, he tried to stage a complete fan boycott--and he actually got somewhere with it. I admit I love the song, even if I recognize it as a rip off of Survivor and I don't think it's the kinda music Kylie should be doing (she did another very similar track as a Bside to Body Language--Cruise Control which even has a "rent a rapper"--yet I actually love iut--it's a fun little track).

*edit* just realized Cruise Control, with the rapper removed, was on the US Body Language along with You Make Me Feel as a bonus.

Of course she seems to have won over her gay fans with her recent tour performances of the song--mixing it with fan fave Where the Wild Roses Grow and of course dancing to it with her male dancers wearing next to nothing. I guess that's all it takes ( actually it helps that her genius live music guru, Steve Anderson, re-arranged it perfectly).

I will say one thing for the Body Language era--while I think it shoulda been more based around songs like Slow--a progression of her Fever sound--her look was spot on--the Brigitte Bardot stuff is something nearly all fans agree was one of her best looking eras. (the Money Can't Buy promo concert she did for the album is also some of her, and William Baker's, best work).