Kylie Minogue Week: Discography Part 2

*again by the ho and moi*

Resuming Kylie's discography, we're now going to talk about her post-PWL's albums. She left the label seeking for more artistic freedom and of course the world saw how creatively genius this woman can get. So here we go.

1994 - Kylie Minogue [Deconstruction]

Moi: It's so far my favorite Kylie album. Even if most of the songs are covers, Minogue owns them with perfection and the cinematic production of the whole is mesmerizing. A theatrical album, that times is sexy and times goes gorgeously romantic/dramatic, KM94 [how it was nicknamed] has some glue flaws, a couple songs although not bad don't exactly fit to the whole, but it totally doesn't take away Minogue's humble effort into maturity and possession of her creative process. The highlight is of course The Dramatic Trilogy.

PS: about her change of image: "she looks like the sexy teacher every [straight] boy dreams about. The way she played with the 'serious' and 'laid-back' looks is adorable, you can't see on the cover, but she's actually barefooted."

The Ho: The rebirth of Kylie came in the shape of an album that questions absolutely everything. Musically she abstains herself from her trademark high toned pitch and goes through several songs merely whispering, while the arrangements range from the trip-hop paradise of Where Is the Feeling?* to the cinematic, strings drama of Confide In Me. Lyrically, she talks about lust and tongues; instead of waiting for someone to tell her "they are really through", she seems empowered and assertive in her affirmations. In the exquisite Put Yourself In My Place she sounds intoxicated and revengeful as she expresses what she wishes will happen to her former lover. The next morning she wakes up hung over and sings Dangerous Game where she realizes that no revenge will ease her pain, which leads her to be numbed by the postmodern Automatic Love she sings about consequently. The album resumes with an infectious house beat highly influenced by the dream pop movement of the early 90's. The last songs put you in an unconscious state of trance, as if to heal us from the existential epiphanies that preceded them.

PS: about her change of image: "it gives me the impression she's crawling back from somewhere and struggling to become who she wants to be."

Top 5: 5. Where Is The Feeling?; 4. Confide In Me; 3. Automatic Love; 2. Dangerous Game; 1. Put Yourself In My Place.

*The Ho didn't have Where Is The Feeling?'s album version, that happens to be jazzy. The version which he mentions is the single's.

1998 - Impossible Princess [Deconstruction]

Moi: Okay, I'll go corny: it's impossible not to love Impossible Princess. Kylie's most conceptual album has a cool indie rock drive combined with beautiful artistic visual elements and poetry. Yes, poetry! After her acclaimed duet with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds [the gorgeous epic Where The Wild Roses Grow], Kylie took Cave's advice and started writing more personally, giving her a kind of confidence she never experienced until then: "it was like I'd climbed Mount Everest, or jumped out of a plane. So many things that I had avoided for so long were right there. That was what Nick (Cave) was saying to me. 'It'll be brilliant: it'll confront all of your past, all in one fell swoop'. And he was right." The result is a collection of lyrically deep songs with magnificent basis arrangements: the basslines and percussions are perfectly constructed and performed, giving the dancey features to the tracks; add to that marvelous guitar works, plus a magical flute and a sexy trumpet here and there, and you'll have an album so full of life and meaning, that it suddenly becomes understanding why most people didn't get it.

PS: about the cover artworks: "Kylie teamed with then boyfriend French photographer Stéphane Sednaoui and together they did one of her most artsy and impressive artworks. On the cover she looks both sacred and mundane under that vial with such heavy make-up."

The Ho: In the majestic closing number, Dreams, Kylie Minogue has an existential dialect with herself as she says she "wants every man but love only one" and "to be a sinner, a saint, a lover, a friend". The whole album is pretty much summed up in this dualistic, ambiguously dark mood where Kylie for the first time reveals what she's really all about. Her rage is felt in the stunning Too Far, while she brings formalistic joy to Drunk which she performs as if in the middle of an alcohol induced argument with herself. Limbo is a space ode that deals with earthy feelings and Cowboy Style's cultural pastiche is delightful. It's funny to think that there is no musical coherence in the album, since almost every song feels different from the others, yet somehow as she goes from the indie pop explosion of Some Kind of Bliss to the trance like Breathe we realize there actually is a conductor thread to the album: Ms. Minogue herself. And as with the whole of the album we come to a delicious paradox: how can we expect homogenous behavior from someone so complex?

PS: about the cover artworks: "it instantly takes me to the line in Cowboy Style where she says 'you are from the temple, won't you stay a while'. I LOVE her silent expression, 'cause she seems to have found peace in her very own temple (which is what IP is all about imo)."

Top 12*: 1. Some Kind Of Bliss; 2. Breathe; 3. Dreams; 4. Limbo; 5. Drunk; 6. Too Far; 7. Cowboy Style; 8. I Don't Need Anyone; 9. Say Hey; 10. Jump; 11. Through The Years; 12. Did It Again

*The album has 12 songs, but we love it so much it'd be cruel for our marriage to select just 5, so we reordered the tracks based on our love to them.

2000 - Light Years [Parlophone]

Moi: There are two ways of seeing this album. The cynic one says: after the Impossible Princess flop she decided to return to easy pop and do a commercial flirtacious work that sounds too all over the place even for Minogue. And there's of course the fuck-it one, which happens to be mine: the moment Light Years kicks in with the inviting guitar and uplifting lyrics of Spinning Around you just feel compelled to join Minogue in her leave-the-past-in-the-past proposal and evolve around. But since I'm a cynical bitch I can't help thinking sometimes this is like the shallow smile you give after someone you love hurts you; but truth be told as the album grows in you, you just don't care about that and enjoy the happiness it contains. Her heartbroken tone is of course present under that premise we know [and love], in songs like the overly sad Disco Down and the anthem On A Night Like This.

PS: about Please Stay and us: "Kylie did a ballad version of her Come Into My World hit on her last two tours. If one day she does the same with Please Stay, be sure you'll lose your favorite bitch to a crying heart attack."

The Ho: Kylie's disco renaissance album kicks in with the unapologetic Spinning Around in which she announces an emancipation that became one of the most utterly brilliant pop culture landmarks of the new millennium. The album is a restless masterpiece of dance homage; in Koocachoo she pays tribute to surfer pop, Your Disco Needs You is the song the Pet Shop Boys wish they would've done during their heyday, while the heartbreaking bells in Disco Down evoke the famous dance classics and its mix of musical references with melancholic lyrics achieve dancefloor sublimity. With other highlights including the rockish duet of Kids, the latin guitar infused masterpiece that is Please Stay and the futuristic time warp of the title track, Kylie seems to be taking us on a journey through dance music: past and future. And hell yes, we know we like it like this…

PS: about Please Stay and us: "PS is the highlight of LY for us, we eagerly wait for it to come and then cheer like crazy fuckers because it makes us sad. Worst part is that we wish we could sing it to someone. Yes, we're masochists."

Top 5: 5. Light Years; 4. Disco Down; 3. On A Night Like This; 2. Spinning Around; 1. Please Stay.

2001 - Fever [Parlophone]

Moi: Definitely Kylie Minogue's sexiest album. This dance music euphoria filled with horny lyrics took everybody by the bottom [pun intended] back in 2001 with the instant dance floor classic Can't Get You Out Of My Head; those la la la's split the whole world into lovers and haters of that genius catchy chorus. Either way, no one spent the year without singing [even if unwillingly] the musical interjections that became Kylie's most famous trademark. Fever is as well Minogue's most homogenic album; all the songs have similar electronic elements but in contrary to what cynic people like to say, they have really strong identities. Seeming like she was Prozac-ed most of them don't have the usual dramatic lyrics, and the ones that have it, like Come Into My World and Fragile, are so orgasmic and infectious that there's no time for weeping, just non-stop dancing; still most of it sounds like she got tired of waiting for someone to take her out and just put her best white dress with hood and drove to the party on her gorgeous yellow De Tomaso Mangusa.

Top 5*: 5. Burning Up; 4. Love At First Sight; 3. Come Into My World; 2. Your Love; 1. Can't Get You Out Of My Head.

The Ho: After paying homage to dance in her previous albums, Fever announced the arrival of someone who had created a style all her own. Enveloped by gorgeously subtle string arrangements, synth beeps, a restless bassline and the famous la la la's, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head took the whole world by storm when it was released. The surprise here is that this isn't even the best song in the album. Your Love is a beautiful, thumping love song, while Fever is the cutest song about horniness that I've heard. There's no real uniting line in the album, other than the need to move. The lyrics still carry the melancholic undertones of the past, but aimed more towards easy metaphors and hopeful themes. Even if it talks about obsession more than once, its effects aren't shown through words, but by the beats themselves. Come Into My World is a brilliant moment where every layer repeats itself leading towards a crescendo that never really comes, but we never really want the album to end anyways.

Top 5*: 5. Love Affair; 4. Can't Get You Out Of My Head; 3. Come Into My World; 2. Your Love; 1. Love At First Sight.

*We couldn't come to an agreement for the top 5, so we took separated ways. Relax, it was just a crisis.

2003 - Body Language [Parlophone]

Moi: Minogue's bravest album since Impossible Princess. Really, the release of Slow was a big surprise to everyone who was waiting for a Fever Part Deux, and I ashamedly include myself in that group. The album modernizes the funk beats adding to them delicious electronic and Lounge music elements, making the songs sound nostalgic yet really fresh. It never ceases growing in you, making you love each track even more at every hearing. Reinventing her sexiness to a coquette style, Body Language is again a very conceptual work, in which the songs are more like acts of seduction than sex itself. But surprisingly some songs, like the gorgeous Promises and Someday, sound so bitter you probabaly start thinking Minogue got tired of dancing to keep from crying and decided to stick out her tongue. Either way, the result is an album that feel endless and you suddenly find yourself listening to it over and over again.

PS: about the gorgeous artwork: *turns Madonna voice on* "Bridget Bardot, we love you!"

The Ho: Confession: there was a time when I hated Body Language. Yes, I too was guilty of judging Kylie. After Fever I was expecting something similar and when I got the radically different singles, beginning with Slow I was disappointed. Luckily I decided to buy the album and my misconceptions completely changed. This is perhaps her best album and certainly one of her most experimental. Recurring to delirious 80's beats she seems to be inventing the very concept of “funky”. With songs as Still Standing with its ridiculously catchy chorus and beats, to the stunning Slow which evokes the oxymoronic concepts of videogames and sex, Kylie makes this the perfect pairing of retro and future. But she doesn't conform with merely doing 80's beats, she also gives her shot at jazzy lounge with result dreamlike and resemble French New Wave music. Her greatest achievement here is the masterpiece that is Chocolate, which has perhaps the best lyrics in any Kylie song so far and literally melts you.

PS: about the gorgeous artwork: "I think the art work is deliciously anchronistic: La Bardot selling 80's dance music could only work with Kylie."

Top 5: 5. Loving Days; 4. Promises; 3. Still Standing; 2. Slow; 1. Chocolate

Note: All the reviews were writen separatedly, therefore the quirky coincidences were REALLY quirky and somtimes scary coincidences.