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album reviews

Kylie Minogue



Kylie - The Album 6 ( 1988 )
I Should Be So Lucky / The Locomotion / Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi / It's No Secret / Got To Be Certain / Turn It Into Love / I Miss You / I'll Still Be Loving You / *Look My Way / Love At First Sight

Kylie Minogue is a phenomenon of truly international proportions. Well, so says her official web-site, at least. And, true to their word, her 39 or so singles to date have all been hits, many of them worldwide hits. She even conquered the good ol US of A with her 'Fever' album in 2001, which reached the giddy heights of number three on the Billboard album charts. Still, we go back to 1987 when our Kylie was appearing on Australian soap opera, 'Neighbours'. Producers Stock Aitken and Waterman felt that the popularity of 'Charlene', the character that Ms Minogue played, could be refashioned into the pop world. The signs were there after Kylie had taken her cover of 'The Locomotion' to the top of the Australian singles charts. Anyhoo, following the involvement of SAW, Kylie soon had a single at the top of the UK singles charts, 'I Should Be So Lucky'. The rest, as they say, is history. True, 'I Should Be So Lucky' is one of the most annoying songs on earth and the music fashioned for this Kylie breakthrough formulaic in the extreme, but who am I to argue with the majority? Even worse is her version of 'The Locomotion'. Well, not her fault, the original song is a dog of a song in the first place, I never even liked the 60s original! And so it goes on, the third song on the album also being released as a single, although this one isn't quite so irritating. True, the programmed musical backing is still to formula, albeit this time sounding softer underneath the vocal chords of our Kylie. Kylie sings this well, actually. She hasn't exactly got a lot of range as a vocalist and has yet to truly exploit her sultry and seductive nature, all of which would come later, but this is enjoyable enough for formula pop. It's inoffensive.

Other songs from this album include the harmless and catchy 'Got To Be Certain' and my personal favourite 'Look My Way'. Let me put it this way. You know when Whitney Houston very first hit the music scene? All her songs sounded really fresh and soulful, both vocally and musically? Well, the SAW guys behind Kylie at this stage fashioned a neat backing track for 'Look My Way', as neat as formulaic teen pop can be, at least. Still, it begs the question. Whitney could have sung this song in 1988 and attracted at least a modicum of respect from certain music writers for doing so. True, Kylie doesn't have the same type of voice as Whitney and I'd never say that she does, but this is a classy moment. The rest of the album apart from one or two of the singles is entirely forgettable, but Stock Aitken and Waterman were soon in the studio with our Kylie again. They had a star on their hands.

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Readers Comments Mark Traill mwtraill@yahoo.co.uk 6? C'mon Adrian, I know you like to be objective, and thats is a very good thing considering you review such a wind range of albums, and is always the reason Ibut this is not a 6! It's -6! It's cheesy, she can't sing; if you want 80's synth-pop danny danny@leftoffthedial.com I enjoy this album a lot despite it's cheeziness, but I think it's funny that Kylie has 2 entirely different songs with the exact same title. "Love at First Sight". I'm sure Kylie never even thought about it at the time--which tells you how distant this era's relevance was to Fever-era Kylie. God bless her.

I was just reading amazon.com, as opposed to amazon.co.uk. I should really read the latter, the UK being the country I live in, but the reviews on the American Amazon as far more entertaining. Well, evidence? One compared Kylie's 'Enjoy Yourself' album as akin to listening to a Frank Sinatra album in the feeling both evoke in a listener!! Strange fellow. Anyhow, how about that Kylie? Rushed back into the studio in proper 70s The Osmonds fashion to fashion out a follow-up record to capitalize on the then craze for Australian soap stars, and, indeed anybody produced by Stock Aitken and Waterman. I should say though for those of you that wonder why Kylie survived and Big Fun didn't, that Kylie's voice and looks are the reason. I'll discuss both. Her voice isn't spectacular, but it is infact servicable on the early SAW cuts and it doesn't sound like anybody else's voice. That much is important. Her looks? Well, she's cute and obviously her looks and the inherent cuteness of her character also played a part in her fame. I quite enjoy parts of this album you know, it has a number of ballads on it, me prefering the Kylie ballads of this era to the so happy they hurt pop numbers. Case in point, the title track now sounds so dated and stupidly upbeat and lacking any depth whatsoever, that it hurts to listen to it. On the other hand, her cover of an old 50s tune 'Tears On My Pillow' reveals an actual sophistication and a love for that kind of music that might not have been Kylie's, but was indeed somebody's within the SAW team. Waterman likes old steam trains, perhaps it was him?!? So yes, even if you were 15 years old at the time of this tune reaching number 1 in the UK singles charts in 1989, and more into Inspiral Carpets than Kylie, this song and performance reduced you to being seven years old again and believing in Disney-land as a magical place and believing that Hollywood was real.

Elsewhere, 'Tell Tell Signs' is perfectly listenable and contains that old Hollywood magic in a way that the more upbeat and teen friendly singles definitely don't. The best of the SAW penned singles is probably 'Hand On Your Heart' because it did and still does sound good coming out of a stereo in someone's back-garden in the middle of summer. The rest of the songs on the album make up for a total listening experience less than her debut, but hey, SAW had yet to meddle around with Kylie, so to speak. They were sticking to formula, strictly.

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Readers Comments danny danny@leftoffthedial.com I have no problems with any of your ratings. I can easily see why Kylie's early stuff isn't everyone's cup of tea. She's contraversial! Miki of Lush (who I love) trash talked her as a boring female artist, and then indie guys like Nick Cave & the Manics seem to be posing all trendy by liking her. Throwing all these biases out the window to listen to her albums objectively is the only way to tell if there's something there for you or not. I'm not being trendy when I say I deeply appreciate Kylie's early stuff. After hearing her duet with the Pet Shop Boys (and Nick)I hunted down Enjoy Yourself for $1 on tape a year or two before Light Years ever came out. As an 80s fan I loved it, but I think Kylie's albums are far less full of filler than your average 80s album. Buy something by Cutting Crew or Kim Carnes if you wanna' hear filler. Even Madonna had tons of poor album tracks that were far worse than her singles. SAW made albums that sounded pretty damn close to all the singl! es Kylie released. They might not have been adventurous in formula, but they do have enough cohesion for an LP, and there are different and specific emotions attached to each song. ENJOY YOURSELF is one of my favorite straight feel good albums of the 80s. It's message plain and simple is to keep your cool, and try and enjoy life. Don't make it too complicated. Sometimes that can be a nice reminder. Hand on your heart is a great opener, and there are four other songs on this LP that are so similar to this musically that they keep that energy going--but each of these songs, kylie displays simple but different emotions: song 1)doubt 2)confidence/self-affirmation 3)Hope 4)risk/bravery and 7)rebounding strength. The ballads are introspective, but my favorite "Heaven and Earth" brings up the idea that you can't change everything just before the title track hits in with a desperate plea to make the best of what you can actually control in life. I think the last song Enjoy Yours! elf has a great high NRG feel to it too and it stands out from! the SAW formula a lot (and believe me, I own a lot of SAW records noiwadays). I think as a song Enjoy Yourself sounds almost contemporary--at least more contemporary than most songs from 1989. The US version has "Especially for you" with Jason Donovan which is cheesy as hell, but it fits in sweetly with the other ballads here. I wouldn't argue this as Kylie's best album ever, but it fits cohesively well together as a dynamic album which is perfect for lifting your spirits if you need a little straight forward pop. As a Kylie fan I give it an 8.5 which probably sounds ludicrous, but I can't overstate how many times this album has picked my spirits up over the years.

The birth of sex-kylie! Well, that's what they all tell me, and who am I to argue with history? Well, usually the first in line, but we'll let that pass for the moment. Musically, our Kylie was still with the Stock Aitken And Waterman team, so things haven't changed a huge deal from her first two albums. There's an increased use of dance beats, though. Well, the dance beats are slightly more prominent, I suppose. A few hints at late 70s disco, no less. Anyways, we've the by now usual clutch of Kylie singles plus a good half an album of filler. That was the Stock Aitken And Waterman formula. So, singles? 'Better The Devil You Know' has a tune. Strangely, given all the commentary that Kylie couldn't sing at all, Kylie provides the tune. The backing track Stock Aitken and Waterman provide is perfunctory at best. They do a better job with 'Step Back In Time', a few production flourishes that firmly plant the tune in disco, help Kylie take steps towards becoming a diva. I must say, I prefer 'Step Back In Time' to the usually more popular 'Better The Devil You Know'. Both are good enough, though. Switching back to SAW cheese, we get 'What Do I Have To Do', utterly forgettable plastic pop. 'Secrets' is the kind of SAW track that could have been designed for Jason Donovan, Rick Astley. Anybody. It's a generic synthetically created backing track, that Kylie struggles through.

My pick of 'Rhythm Of Love' alongside 'Step Back In Time', is 'Shocked'. SAW actually create a genuinely credible pop dance track which Kylie does her usual stuff over. I'm not saying 'Shocked' is a great masterwork, nothing as daft as that, but it is genuinely enjoyable fluff. Album tracks such as the title track and 'Things Can Only Get Better' are utterly forgettable pieces that indeed, you forget as soon as they've finished. Overall, we can deduce that the SAW team wanted to try and update their sound, especially for Kylie. They didn't make enough strides towards doing that however, because of the way they worked. In and out, quickly dash off ten songs in a week then divvy them up between their roster of artists. Occasionally write songs specifically for a particular artist, such as Kylie Minogue. Basically, they lacked enough ambition to do anything other than create a conveyor belt of pop tunes and pop artists to make money from. It's something the organisers of the likes of 'Pop Idol' and 'X Factor' will recognize. Like looking back at themselves in the mirror. So, 'Rhythm Of Love'? A couple of tracks are ok. Elsewhere, the whole generic nature of the music in particular, is just so very irritating. I prefer either of the first two albums. This attempt at updating Kylie just means she loses that innocent quality the very best moments of the first two albums provided us with.

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Readers Comments mark allan_112@hotmail.com Some of these tracks were produced and written by the guy who by and large helped create some of Madonnas biggest early 1980's hits such as Into The Groove, Dress You Up and True Blue, Stephen Bray. His tracks notably Rythm Of Love hark back to the glory days of Madonna the pop/disco diva..from this album onward Kylie would indeed use Madonna as the basis of her career.

The history of our Kylie gets a little confused sometimes. Numerous comebacks even though she’s never been away and actually several album titles vying for the position of mature breakthrough. Well, take a look at this. It was 1991 that for the very first time credible music magazines started lauding our Kylie, NME Melody Maker and music-week all using words such as ‘incredible’ and ‘exceptional’. Commercially of course Kylie had been doing just fine anyway. ‘Let’s Get To It’, although still going gold, sold significantly less than the previous three Kylie albums however. Perhaps retrospectively ‘Let’s Get To It’ hasn’t been given the attention it deserves. It was after all her last album with Stock Aitken And Waterman. Well, she entered the PWL studios with Mike Stock and collaborated, co-writing some six or seven of the tunes here. This wasn’t entirely your standard SAW release, the music ranging from soul to pop to techno. Yes, Kylie releasing disco and techno tunes back in 1991. This is proper techno, too, ‘I Guess I Like It Like That’ has all the trademark techno noises of the age. The apparent failures of ‘Let’s Get To It’ in Kylie history can be taken right back to the time it was released. Although gaining good reviews from the serious press, perhaps the combination of music and image wasn’t quite there and perhaps the existing Kylie audience weren’t ready for the experimentation. Well, Kylie certainly didn’t go all avant-garde on us, yet for Stock Aitken And Waterman productions which were heavily formula, this is something of a minor breakthrough and certainly a new era for her musically.

So, the tunes, are there any? Well, of course there are and despite retrospective reassessments of the relative merits of these early Kylie albums, to my mind ‘Let’s Get To It’ withstands the test of time far better than any of her other SAW releases. With only the slightest of production tweaks, the majority of the tunes present here would still sound current today. Secondly, take a look at the first five songs. Lead single ‘Word Is Out’ was certainly a departure from Kylie of old, although this subtle, adult and accomplished tune failed to dent the top ten. Elsewhere, a refined ballad with Keith Washington, Kylie not sounding one iota out of place, ‘Too Much Of A Good Thing’ and ‘Finer Feelings’ mix up dance and pop and sound right there. Not quite cutting edge but certainly as good as anybody in the pop field circa 1991. ‘Finer Feelings’ in particular is a delightfully seductive pop tune packed to the brim with class. Sat in amongst all of these credibly enjoyable tunes is a cover, ‘Give Me Just A Little More Time’. Unsurprisingly married to the bouncy and cheesy SAW production values of previous Kylie records this easily became the biggest hit from the album. Credit to Kylie though, sh1e lends ‘Give Me Just A Little More Time’ an element of class. No, I haven’t gone mad, actual class! Erm, side two of the album is good as well, by the way. ‘No World Without You’ is acoustic guitar plus Kylie vocal. That’s it. It’s quite accomplished and Kylie should have enjoyed the worldwide sales and worldwide acclaim right then back in 1991/1992, rather than having to wait another decade or so.

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Kylie signs to dance label DeConstruction and releases a dance-pop album. So far, so reasonably similar to everything else she'd done. She had far more input than before, a continuation of the battle for freedom that had resulted in 'Let's Get To It'. Dance bods such as Dave Seaman ( not the goalkeeper for Arsenal! ) penned the likes of 'Confide In Me' and 'Dangerous Love' and Kylie was suddenly breaking into areas marked 'hip'. If she still wasn't welcomed in with open-arms, it seems that was because people didn't quite trust her and where the dance-makeover was coming from. Was she just a puppet now for other people? Oh, and where was the fun that characterised the Stock, Aitken and Waterman days? All valid points, yet that's to ignore the sheer quality several of the tunes here display. Seeking out and hand-picking the producers and recording a bunch of tracks with different people and in different studios caused the most common critiscm of the album, that it seems disjointed. This is certainly true, but it's as much true of several Madonna albums, for instance. It isn't something exclusive to this album and seems to be a somewhat churlish critiscm of music-writers viewing and hearing Kylie in 1994. True, the merrily placed dance-beats of 'Where Is The Feeling' now seems almost as dated as her SAW productions, 'Confide In Me' is truly timeless and absolutely wonderful. 'Time Will Pass You By' sounds like a Eurovision song contest entry and by no means is better than any of her SAW material. 'Put Yourself In My Place' is an absolutely seductive mid-tempo ballad which also saw Kylie getting seriously sexy in a Barbarella themed video. Classy album cuts include the lovely 'Dangerous Love' and the confident 'If I Was Your Lover'. Both are a whisker ahead of the usual Kylie album track of yore, certainly.

For all the qualities the rest of the album has, the first two singles remain the finest moments here and elevate 'Kylie Minogue' above any other LP she'd released to date. 'Put Yourself In My Place' is sensual, slow and sports a delicious Kylie vocal full of maturity and actual power. A great slow-burning summer song, it peaked at number 11 in both the UK and Australia, although for my money should have gone onto become a much bigger hit. 'Confide In Me' is of course, even better. Arguably still her finest musical moment to this date, the Showgirl tour only served to highlight how classy this slice of musical heaven was and still remains to be. The eastern sounding strings form a distinctive musical hook, propelling the tune to number one in Israel of all places. Elsewhere across Europe and Australia, 'Confide In Me' generally nestled in at number two, becoming one of her biggest hits in the process. Pre-dating her '2nd' comeback with the 'Light Years' LP by some three or four years and still sounding cutting edge, 'Confide In Me' is so enticing. Her vocal is streets ahead of anything else she'd done and still sends shivers throughout my body. Dave Seaman who penned/co-penned the tune would have struggled to have cherry picked any other singer from anywhere that would have done such a fine job with this tune. That's how well she sings and her voice reaches a state of classy distinctiveness, all signs of eighties pop cheese definitely gone. That's it then folks. Kylie well on her way with one of her finer single and album releases. Hats off to our Kylie! Raise a glass.

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In 1995, Minogue recorded the song "Where the Wild Roses Grow", a duet with fellow Australian Nick Cave. The success of the single hinted that our Kylie could indeed be accepted and respected outside her established pop fanbase. So, Kylie set to work on 'Impossible Princess', ending up being in full creative control, also writing all of the lyrics herself. Working with a variety of producers, she even managed to soley write two tracks that feature here, 'Too Far' and 'Say Hey'. 'Some Kind Of Bliss' and 'I Don't Need Anyone' were co-written with the Manic Street Preachers, many other songs co-written with the production duo of Steve Anderson and Dave Seaman. There's a misconception you see that 'Impossible Princess' is Kylie's take on indie. Only the Manic Street Preachers tunes resemble indie, 'Some Kind Of Bliss' chosen to lead the album, stalling outside the top twenty upon release as a single. Ah, ok. 'Did It Again' came across like a clumsy cross between Alanis Morrissete and dance music, but never mind that. Safe to say, the singles from the previous album were far better, anyway. So, 'Too Far' opens the album dramatically, with a strong vocal, a touch of orchestration and drum'n'bass. A very full sounding track with funky beats, it flows well into the impressive, eastern flavoured 'Cowboy Style'. Either one of these two songs would have made better singles than the ones eventually chosen, by the way. 'Cowboy Song' reminds me of Bjork, by the way. Very good.

What else, then? Well, the 2nd Manics penned track is better than the first. 'I Don't Need Anyone' is an enjoyable, guitar based take on Motown. The noisy almost industrial clatter of 'Limbo' ensures the second half of the album is listenable, arriving straight after 'I Don't Need Anyone'. Non Kylie fans should listen to tracks like this and 'Cowboy Style'. 'Impossible Princess' is an impressively diverse album, but that good thing also means the album suffers from a slightly disjointed nature, in places. The closing track is title 'Dreams' and also manages to be one of the better tracks here. So, a brave yet flawed album? An inconsistent album? Well, both of those things but also a transitional album that had to be made. Once Kylie had put in such a performance creatively, make no mistake about this being her album, there was no turning back, really.

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